


Fix You

by CharityLambkin



Series: Pygmalion Avenged [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Bondage, Bruce Banner Has Issues, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Depression, Dom/sub, Hallucinations, M/M, Mind Control, Recovery, Science Boyfriends, Science Bros, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-02 14:45:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 53,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1058037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharityLambkin/pseuds/CharityLambkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pygmalion Avenged Part 2</p><p>Ross is dead.  Bruce is back home, but he can't shake the aftermath of his time in captivity.  It's up to Tony and the rest of the team to put him back together.  But, sometimes the greatest enemies are the ones who can't be seen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Sweet Mercy

**Author's Note:**

> This story picks up where Part 1 leaves off. It's a good idea to read that story first because this one builds on the relationship that Tony and Bruce have already established.

You could see the whole city from up here.  The cars whizzed down the avenues in trails of white and red in the dark night.  A police car flew past with its strobes blazing, but it took a long time for the sound of the sirens to travel so far upwards. 

The air smelled cleaner up here, purer, though it could be just a trick of the cold.

He shivered. 

The concrete was cold, and the wind whipped around his dangling feet.  It felt kind of peaceful, up here, all alone for once.  The loneliness wasn’t so bad when he was alone.

Now that he was ready for the end, he found that he wanted to take in his surroundings one last time.  The windows in the apartment building across the street were lit up in a checkerboard of light.  Most of the curtains were drawn.  Some flickered blue and white, and he wondered what they were watching on TV.   He wondered if the people in the little windows were alone, or if they maybe would rather be alone when they weren’t. 

A gust of chill wind made him shiver again.  He reached to pull his jacket around himself, but then he remembered that he left it on the roof behind him, away from the ledge.  It didn’t matter.  Nothing would matter in a minute.

The clouds parted for a second and the silver crescent of a moon shined down on him.  The sky was too washed out with city lights to see the stars, but he didn’t need to see them to know they were there.

He looked down at the street below again.  It was an awfully long way down.  That was good, he reminded himself.  Less of a chance to mess this up, too.

Across the street, a shadow passed in front of one of the lit windows.  The curtains parted and a woman leaned out of the open window to light a cigarette.  He couldn’t smell it, but he could imagine the scent of tobacco smoke and it made his nose itch.  She smoked it down to the nub and then flicked the flaming end out of the window to float to the sidewalk below.  His eyes followed the ember, but it went out halfway down.

He heard, once, that you pass out before hitting the ground.  He hoped that was true.

A dog barked, far away.

Well, he thought.  Now or never.

The wind blew again, buffeting him so that he had to grab the edge hard to keep from falling off.  An odd laugh bubbled out of him.  How funny, grabbing for the edge so that he wouldn’t fall.

Maybe…maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.   He could go home, get some sleep.  The building would be here tomorrow.  That, at least, he could count on.

Shaking with cold, he carefully drew his feet back up onto the edge and pushed himself back.  He stood, tottering on unsteady legs and took one last look down on the street below.

Then, suddenly, there was a hard shove against his shoulder and he pitched forward.  In a brief second of adrenaline-fueled clarity, he realized that he did not want to die, alone, in the cold, and his hands scrabbled in the empty air.  But then he was falling and everything was in slow motion as he felt gravity suspend him in the air for an impossible length of time before he was tumbling down into the darkness.  He tried to scream, but there was no air in his lungs, and all he could do was shut his eyes tight so he couldn’t see the ground rushing up at him.

****

The air shimmered as a slim figure appeared on the rooftop.  She walked cautiously to the edge of the building to look down on the street below.  There was already a crowd forming.  It was a shame that he, in death, attracted all the attention he could not in life.  At least now he was at peace.  Hopefully, the afterlife would be kinder to him.

She stepped back before anyone had the insight to look up.  A brown suit jacket lay discarded on the grey gravelly roof, and she stepped delicately around it.

Winter was in the air.  She could smell it on the breeze and feel it in the early-morning frost rimming the metal of the fire escape as she made her way down the side of the building.

Winter was her favorite time of year.  It was a time of rest, of peace, of death before the spring’s rebirth.  There were just so many people to _help_ during the holidays.

She wandered the streets, following the ebb and flow of the tide of emotions that flowed as freely as wind through the city.  Suddenly, a gust of wind brought the smell of despair to her and she stopped in her tracks.  Despair was not exactly difficult to come by in this city, but _this_ scent was different.  It was aged, layered, mulled with strange spices that she hadn’t tasted before.  It was intoxicating.  She had to find the poor soul at its source.

The ground floated away as she levitated, imagining herself as an invisible feather on the breeze.  Flying above the city, she followed the scent on the breeze.  There, far below, was figure huddled on the sidewalk against a towering skyscraper.   He looked miserable, head bowed and pressed into his folded knees.  It was cold, but he wore nothing but a pair of jeans and a flannel pajama top.  Both looked new.

But, despite his innocuous appearance, she could sense the pit of despair that roiled just beneath the surface.  It felt like a salted wound, left raw and untreated for too long.  How could anyone live in such a state? Why would anyone _want_ to?

He didn’t shiver.  He didn’t even seem to feel the cold.  Why, he was already half-dead, she mused.  It wouldn’t take much more to convince him to journey the rest of the way.  There were still a few hours before dawn; it wouldn’t even take the rest of the night, she guessed.

She was about to alight at his side, to take him in hand and show him the way to finally rid himself of the pain, when another figure appeared from around the corner of the building.  He walked straight toward the man and knelt beside him.  They spoke, and even though she couldn’t hear what they said, she knew what the general message would be.  She was right, and the second man helped the seated one to his feet and then guided him back indoors.

Oh well.  Not tonight, then.  Still, she could not abandon such a soul in pain.  It just wouldn’t be right.  But that was fine; she had all the time in the world.

Looking up at the towering skyscraper, she smiled when she saw the neon lights at the top.

Stark Tower.


	2. Distorted Perception

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Bruce Banner, sometimes reality is difficult to trust.

Bruce woke with a start, tangled in sheets, swallowing down a scream.

The body next to him roused and blue-white light casted shadows on the wall as Tony sat up.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Bruce didn’t answer at once.  His breath came in quick pants as he fought to calm his racing heart.  He kicked his legs free of the sweat-damp satin and swung them over the side of the bed.  That was better, he thought, as he pressed his bare feet into the cold wood floor; he felt more grounded, and he could bend his head between his knees to combat the faint feeling that hyperventilation left in its wake.

“What was it about?” Tony asked.  He didn’t need to ask what was wrong again.

“I was falling…” Bruce murmured.  His voice was rough, and he coughed to clear it.  “That’s all I remember.”

Tony huffed.  “Well, it’s not the fall that kills you.”

“No,” Bruce agreed.  “Not me.”

Though JARVIS kept the room at a steady temperature, the chill from the floor started to creep into Bruce’s bare legs.  He couldn’t decide whether to pull them back under the covers and try to go back to sleep, or to get up.  Now that he could focus on his surroundings, he noticed the grey and pink dawn light filtering in through the windows.  Only a few hours had passed since Tony had put them both to bed, but Bruce realized that he wouldn’t be able to sleep anymore.  He rose, smoothing the blankets back over Tony.

“Oh no,” Tony said.  “If you’re getting up, so am I.”

“It’s early,” Bruce replied.  “Besides, what do you have planned for today?”

“Building shit and blowing it up,” Tony said.  “And don’t tell me I need to be well-rested for that.  Mechanical engineering goes great with a side of sleep deprivation.  Ask any MIT student.”

Bruce conceded with a small smile.   He rose and looked around for some kind of shirt to wear.  His clothes were still on the bathroom floor from the night before—well, earlier that morning he supposed.  He had gone for a short walk and ended up sitting on the sidewalk in front of the Tower in the cold.  Tony had found him, taken him back inside, warmed him up, and put him to bed.  Tony’s bed.  It wasn’t like they had done…anything…except sleep afterwards, but the experience was still intimate and disarming and left Bruce feeling vulnerable in the early morning hours.

The sheets rustled as Tony rose.  He padded across the room to his huge walk-in closet and disappeared.  “It’s cold!” Tony complained from the depths of the closet.  “JARVIS, what’s up with the heat?  It’s not like we’re rationing coal here.”

“The temperature is at 72 degrees, as it always is.  But I will raise the thermostat if you wish.”

“Oh, forget it,” Tony said.  He reappeared wearing a black thermal shirt and tossed a sweatshirt at Bruce.  He caught it out of reflex and shook out the folds.

It was an MIT sweatshirt, obviously worn, stained with grease, with the silk screened letters cracking in some places.  Bruce raised a questioning eyebrow but Tony shrugged in return.

“May as well look the part,” he explained with a lopsided smile.

But Bruce didn’t question it again.  He pulled it on and was immediately surrounded by the smell of engine oil, old cologne and, underneath it all, the faint smell of coconut.  Always coconut.  It was good.  Familiar.  Safe.

“I don’t know if I ever kept any of my college sweaters,” Bruce said.

“Hey, I _lived_ in that thing.  We have history together.”

“It smells like it.”

“It’s clean!”

“I know,” Bruce said.  “It just smells like…you.  It’s nice.”

That made Tony smile.  “Come on,” he said.  “I have _ideas_ for the next suit.”

****

The thing about Tony was that he was a futurist.  The past didn’t matter.  Once something happened, it was gone, it ceased to exist.  The only thing anybody could ever change was the present, and, by extension, the future.  That’s what Tony loved—prospect, possibility, probability.  He didn’t just live in the moment, he lived in the moment _beyond_ the moment.

Sometimes Bruce wished he could, too.  But he wasn’t a futurist.  He was a physicist.  There were patterns, rules, laws, that couldn’t be broken, no matter how strongly he _hoped_ or _believed_.

But, wait, that wasn’t true either.  He was living testament that some of the most basic tenants of physics could be broken.  Then again, if he looked at it that way, it was most likely a law that could be bent into a shape that his human brain could not yet process, like Thor’s hammer, or Tony’s unyielding optimism.

Tony snapped his fingers in front of Bruce’s eyes, startling him out of his reverie.  The workshop came back into sharp focus: dark walls designed to absorb shock and sound, floor polished to a shine, lights dim to highlight the blue holographic diagrams that floated in the air.

“Hey, sorry.  I just…was somewhere else for a second.”

Tony leaned against the workbench. “You’ve been doing that a lot lately,” he said.

“Yeah, I know.  I’ve just been…distractible.” Bruce winced at how lame that sounded, even to his own ears.

But Tony nodded, accepting the answer.  “You’re probably tired, Doc,” he said.  “Why don’t you lie down on the couch and take a quick cat nap?”

Bruce shook his head.  “I’m fine, really,” he murmured.

A single eyebrow quirked up, but Tony didn’t push it.  “Ok, then, take a look here.” He pulled a blueprint out of the air and shoved it towards Bruce.  He recognized it easily—it was the Mark XVII, Heartbreaker, which Bruce had helped to assemble.

Bruce considered the hologram.  The design worked well both in simulations and on the field. “What do you want to do with him?” Bruce asked.

Tony flicked the hologram and it spun in the air.  He crossed one arm across his chest and rubbed his beard with the other.  “Right now, he’s a tank.”

“A _flying_ tank,” Bruce corrected.

“A flying tank.  But, it’s big and noisy.  You can see him coming a mile away.”

Bruce agreed.  He remembered how easy it had been to evade Tony and Heartbreaker in their mad-dash hide-and-seek game…was it really only a few months ago?  It felt like years had passed since then.

“So you want to make it…not big and noisy?  I’m sorry, but we just don’t do that here at Stark Industries.”

Tony cut his eyes sideways for a second.  “What if,” he said as he started to pace around the hologram, “one day I _need_ to go into enemy territory?  Without being detected?  By anyone?”

That was the Tony he knew, always playing the hypotheticals, the “what if” game.  A thought suddenly occurred to Bruce.

“You want to literally fly under the radar.  So you still haven’t made up with SHIELD,” Bruce said.  “Is it the whole team, or just you?”

“Have you received an apology from Fury yet?  Or better yet, a hand-written invitation back into their service, sealed with a kiss, and spritzed with that cheap-ass cologne he wears?”

Bruce didn’t answer.  He didn’t need to, and any answer he gave would just encourage Tony.

“Then, no,” Tony continued, “we’re not playing nice until they do.”

Bruce sighed.  By Tony’s use of “we” he assumed it was the entire team.  He hated that this was all over him.  It would be so much simpler and better for the team if he just wasn’t there to mess things up for them.  And all for what?  So that SHIELD didn’t take perfectly reasonable safety measures around the Other Guy?  Just so that Bruce could feel more like a person than the monster he was?  What did that matter, in the long run.   It didn’t matter to him.

A strange, pink light rippled the holograms in the corner of his vision, but when he turned his head to look straight at it, it was already gone.  He shook his head.  His eyes were playing tricks on him.

Tony was quiet, watching him with a strange look in his eyes.  “Are you ok?”

That was a stupid question.  When was he ever “ok”?

“I’m ok.”

“Ok enough to be trusted with math?”

“Oh, that’s playing with fire, there,” Bruce said, waving his hands in a warning gesture front of him.

Tony smirked.  “Around here, yeah, it kind of is.  A dropped decimal can turn a Mentos and Diet Coke experiment into a nuclear meltdown.”

“How many Mentos _would_ it take to power the suit?” Bruce wondered aloud.

Tony sighed in disappointment.  “The weight-to-energy ratio is too high for it to be a viable power source.”

“So you’ve thought about it before.”

“Of course I have.  Drunken science is bestest science.  I’m pretty sure that I’ve scrawled the answers to sustainable energy, world hunger _and_ a great idea for the next Muppet Movie on cocktail napkins somewhere.”

Bruce laughed and Tony chuckled with him.

“What do you need?” Bruce asked.  “I’ll try to keep the numbers straight.”

What Tony needed was to miniaturize the reflection panels he had built for the Helicarrier and his own personal quinjet.  The current plates were far too big to fit on the suit and fit the fluid curves and tiny joints.  Tony pulled up the blueprint file and expanded it into a scale hologram, then shot it over to Bruce’s workstation.  Bruce sat down on stool and started going over the specs, breaking the hologram into its composite layers to really get a feel for how the thing worked.

After half an hour, Bruce was pretty sure it wouldn’t work.  The reflector technology was based on LED screens—cameras on the back side took a picture of whatever was behind the panel and projected it on the front panel.  That way, it created an illusion of seeing through an object.  It was pretty simple, really.  Bruce had seen a Halloween costume with two tablets that created the same effect, and it looked like there was a hole right through the person wearing it.  But, with the LEDs, the circuitry, and the cameras, the tiles themselves were too heavy—negligible weight when considering a vehicle the size of a plane or an aircraft carrier, but add even an extra thirty to forty pounds to the Iron Man suit and it pulled too much power to keep it in the air for any reasonable length of time.  But Bruce could see why Tony was using Heartbreaker as the base design—the larger arc reactor would be able to support some extra weight, but it would be clunky, like a flying refrigerator.  Well, an _invisible_ flying refrigerator, but still…

“Just because you’re too goddam stupid to figure it out doesn’t mean that it’s impossible!”

What the hell?  Bruce spun around so fast that he almost fell off the stool.  He looked at Tony, but, no…Tony was clear on the other side of the shop, and that voice had been right in his ear.  And it wasn’t Tony’s voice, either.

It sounded like Brian Banner.  It sounded like his father.

Bruce’s hands shook so he braced them on the edge of the desk, focusing on the feeling of the smooth metal edges creasing his palms while he took deep, measured breaths.  He counted to five on the inhale and five on the exhale, letting the numbers take over his internal monologue so that he didn’t think….

….he didn’t think about the last time he heard that voice.  Hallucinations.  The glass cage.  Cold…

“Think you’re so smart, boy?  You’re nothing but a monster!”

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

He was shivering, so he let go of the edge of the table and hugged his arms to his body.  The sweatshirt under his fingers was warm, worn soft and thin over time.  That was real.  Nothing else mattered.  The sweatshirt was real. 

A sudden metal clang made Bruce jump, and he tumbled off the edge of the stool, clutching the table to keep from falling to the floor.  Adrenaline spiked through his bloodstream, and he could feel the Other Guy wake up and take notice, watching, waiting to see if there was a threat to be neutralized.

“Bruce! What the hell?”

“No!  It’s not real!” Bruce yelled.

There were solid arms around him, thick and heavy, stronger than him, and he _pushed_ back.  No, not this time.  He wasn’t going to let it happen again.

“Ok.  I won’t touch you again.  But I’m right here, Buddy.  Nothing’s going to happen to you, not here,” Tony said, soft and firm and just far enough away to make Bruce wish he was closer.

Tony… _Tony._

“Tony?” Bruce asked cautiously, cracking his eyes open.  When had he closed his eyes?

“Yeah.  I’m right here.”

Blue-white light reflected off the floor into Bruce’s eyes, and Tony _was_ right there, crouching down so they were eye to eye.  He was so quiet and still that Bruce doubted him for a moment.  But then Tony blinked, and his eyes were so filled with concern, lips slack as if he wanted to say something but didn’t dare, and reality crashed back down around him like a wave.

“Tony…” Bruce started.  “I...I thought I was somewhere else.”

Tony licked his lips.  “Are you back now?” 

“I think so.  We’re in the shop?”

“Yes,” Tony confirmed, and Bruce could see some of the tension lines around his eyes ease.

“And…we’re working on…the suit?”

“That’s a pretty good guess,” Tony said, and his lips quirked up in a bit of a smile.  “Can I come closer?”

“Yeah,” Bruce said, embarrassed by the waver in his voice. 

Tony, it seemed, didn’t care because he tipped forward onto his hands and knees and slowly crawled the few feet over to where Bruce was huddled against the workbench.  He shoved the stool out of the way and then tentatively put his arms around Bruce’s shoulders, drawing him in close.

Bruce burrowed his face into Tony’s shoulder.  “Did I shove you?” he asked in a muffled voice.

“No,” Tony said firmly.  “You shoved someone else.  I just happened to be the one in front of you at the moment.  Who was it, Bruce?”

“I…think it was…my dad.”

A sound, half a groan and half a growl, rumbled through Tony’s chest.  It was warning and possessive and _dangerous_ , and Bruce sagged deeper into Tony’s embrace.  They laid there for a moment until Bruce felt his shoulders loosen and his breathing return to normal.  The Other Guy seemed to think Tony had the situation well enough in hand and backed off until he was just an angry buzz in the back of his head.

“Up now,” Tony urged and hauled him to his feet.

Bruce felt better, but he still wobbled a bit as he stood.  Tony looked at the hologram suspended above Bruce’s workstation, probably noting that Bruce hadn’t made any progress at all on the design.  Good going, Banner.  Waste of time.

Tony closed the blueprints and grabbed his tablet off his desk.  Then, he took Bruce’s hand and led him over to the sleek leather couch to the side of the workshop. 

“So,” Tony said as he sat down, “what were you thinking when you saw the design?”

Bruce sat across from Tony but the engineer raised an eyebrow and patted the seat next to him.  “Kind of hard to see what we’re doing when you’re way over there.”

So he changed seats and let Tony pull him in closer until they were connected from shoulder to hip.

“I was thinking…I don’t see how to miniaturize the reflective tiles.” Stupid Banner.  “They just weigh too much, unless you want to make the suit solely for reconnaissance and scrap all the weapons.  But, if you’re in enemy territory, I’d feel a lot better if you had some fire power.”

“Yeah, me too,” Tony agree.”  That’s the same wall I ran up against.  I was hoping you could figure out a solution.”

Of course he couldn’t.  He wasn’t a _real_ scientist.

“Uh…well, do you have a plan B?”

Tony sighed.  “Do you?”

“Maybe.  Some other kind of coating that absorbs energy waves and radar instead of reflecting them.  It won’t do you much good for visual cloaking, though.” 

“That’s brilliant! I can fly above visual range, so that’s not the worst of my concerns,” Tony said, perking up and bringing up material files on the tablet.  “JARVIS, what kind of materials could do that?”

Bruce listened half-heartedly as Tony and JARVIS launched into a discussion on silicone paints and dampening agents.  He was too tired and drained to follow the conversation enough to offer much input.  JARVIS’s vast knowledge of material science was more help at this point, anyway. His eyes started to droop, and Tony’s arm came around him, rubbing slowly up and down his side until he tipped over onto his side, his head pillowed in Tony’s lap. 

Just as he was about to fall asleep, a ripple—like a heat wave or a distorted hologram—shifted his visual field.

“Did you see that?” Bruce mumbled.

But Tony was engrossed in the tablet.  “See what?” he asked, casting his eyes about the workshop.

“Nothing,” Bruce yawned.  “My eyes are just tired.  I’m seeing things.”

Tony paused for a long second before he answered.  “Go to sleep, Brucie.  You’ll feel better when you wake up and then we’ll go out and get something to eat.”

Bruce nodded against Tony’s lap and let the hand in his hair and the familiar voices above him soothe him to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for showing such a great interest in this story so far. Really, I am lucky to have the awesome readers that I do!


	3. A Request

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony gets Bruce to leave the Tower. Then, Bruce has a request for Tony.

 

Waking was kinder, this time.  Bruce knew that he was in the shop, that the gentle whirr and hum was Dum-E puttering around, and that the hand that brushed over his shorn hair was Tony.  Knowing these things so easily made Bruce want to hover in that space between sleeping and waking, just to savor the feelings of belonging and acceptance.

His hair was barely growing back, and the sensation of a hand brushing back and forth over his head tickled and made him shiver.  Tony paused, and the hand moved to rest across his shoulder instead. That was a shame.  It felt good, and, well, it was hard to feel good lately.

So, he roused from that sleepy not-awake place enough to reach over and take Tony’s hand and place it back on his head.  A light laugh bubbled up from Tony’s chest and Bruce heard a tablet clatter to the floor as Tony used both hands to pet his head.  His fingers danced across his scalp and dipped down to tickle the little hairs on the nape of his neck and scratch that place between his shoulder blades that he could never reach.  Bruce purred and stretched across his lap like a spoiled housecat. 

“Feeling better, Snowflake?” Tony asked and Bruce didn’t have to open his eyes to see the smug look on his face.

“Hmm,” Bruce replied, not quite agreeing but not disagreeing either.

“Good. I was thinking of waking you up because I’m ready for lunch.”

“Is it lunch if we haven’t eaten breakfast yet?”

“Food, Brucie.  Food.”

Tony stood, forcing Bruce to sit up or fall off the couch.  He picked the tablet up off the floor and tossed it onto the couch before leading the way to the elevator.  Surprisingly, Tony pushed the button to Bruce’s floor instead of the penthouse.

“You need decent clothes if we’re leaving the building,” Tony replied to Bruce’s questioning look.

“Who said I wanted to leave the building,” Bruce grumbled.

But Tony laced their fingers together and Bruce sighed because he knew he was already defeated.

While Bruce was gone, Tony had stocked his closet with an entire winter wardrobe.  There were more clothes there than he would wear all season.  In fact, there were so many choices that it was a little overwhelming.  And, in the weeks since he’d been back to the Tower, most of his days were spent in bed recuperating or wandering aimlessly around his rooms.  Last night was the first time he had even gone back to Tony’s rooms, and even then it was because Tony had brought him there and he had been in no shape to argue.

But, it turned out, he didn’t have to worry about wading through the racks of clothes because Tony sat him on the bed.

“Stay there, Snowflake,” he said with a dark, syrupy inflection in his voice that made Bruce want to follow any command he gave.

Tony disappeared into the closet and came back with dark brown cargo pants lined with flannel, a brown thermal shirt and a green pull-over sweater.  He tossed them to Bruce before rooting around in his drawers for some thick socks and returning to the closet for shoes.

The green sweater was soft, silky, warm, and it felt expensive.  He turned over the tags, and yep, it was cashmere.  Bruce ran the lush material between his fingers, wondering how many other pieces of clothing in there were of the same quality.  Probably all of them.  He could build a few schools with the money Tony spent on that closet full of clothes.   He felt insanely guilty for just a second, but then a warm glow replaced it that was harder to define.  Was it happiness?  No, _things_ (even warm, soft, expensive cashmere things) didn’t make Bruce happy.  It was more like _cared for_ or maybe _loved._

“Need some help with that?” Tony asked.  Bruce looked up from where he was still cradling the sweater in his lap.  Tony was leaning against the closet door frame, his arms crossed and a pair of boots in his hands.  He had found a jacket in the closet for himself, some snazzy black aviator style that Bruce couldn’t imagine ever wearing.

“No,” Bruce said.  “I was just thinking.”

“What were you thinking about?” Tony asked, coming closer to sit on the bed next to him.

Bruce held up the sweater.  “It’s really soft.”

Tony shook his head.  “Thank you, Dr. Banner, smartest man on the planet,” he teased, but his voice was gentle.  He grasped the bottom hem of the MIT sweatshirt and pulled it up over Bruce’s head.  Bruce was a little sad to see it gone, but then, instead of balling it up and throwing it across the room like he usually did with his discarded clothes, Tony folded it and stuffed it under Bruce’s pillow.  “There, dream of me sometime.”

****

They left the Tower through the garage to avoid the crowds that sometimes gathered outside when they knew Tony was home.  Everyone wanted to get a glimpse of Iron Man or—to a slightly lesser extent—Tony Stark.  But, he was almost unrecognizable today with his goatee an overgrown mess, dark sunglasses, and ill-fitting jacket.  To Bruce, he looked even more handsome than ever since his natural charm and good looks shined even more without the signature beard and flashy suits to hide behind.  But, he couldn’t ignore the fact that Tony had let himself get run down because he was too busy looking after Bruce to worry much about how he looked in public.

Still, no one even looked twice as they walked down the street.  Tony hooked his arm through Bruce’s and shoved his hand in his pocket because it was a bit cold out.  The autumn air was refreshing after the long, hot summer, and the trees lining the avenues were already turning to shades of gold against the clear blue sky.  It was the perfect day to be out for a walk.

They wandered down the sidewalks for a little while, but after a few minutes Bruce was already growing tired.  Though he had been on his feet for a few weeks already, his stamina was nothing like it used to be.  Before he had been…before he was gone, he could run four or five miles with Steve, no problem.  Now, he was out of breath after walking a few blocks.

Tony’s arm tightened around his.  “Not much further,” he reassured.

Sure enough, at the end of the block was a little café with a porch enclosed by a wrought-iron fence.  A folding chalkboard on the sidewalk out front announced the day’s specials, and the laminated cardstock menus on the tables were propped up by little ceramic vases filled with bright yellow sunflowers.  Though the restaurant was busy with the lunch-rush crowd, the chill drove most of the patrons inside.

There was no host, so Tony just unlatched the low gate and chose one of the small patio tables instead of trying to maneuver their way through the people.

“Here ok?” he asked, more of an afterthought than a real question.

“Perfect,” Bruce answered, closing the gate after him.

He reached for one of the menus, but Tony snatched it away from him.  To anyone else, his move may have seemed bossy or presumptuous, but Bruce just smiled and let him have his way.  He knew that Tony would choose something he liked; he probably had decided on what to order before they even sat down.  He could just relax and enjoy himself while Tony made all of the hard decisions.  It was just lunch, but lately even deciding on what to eat seemed to take a monumental effort for Bruce.

He was right: When the waitress came to ask what they wanted, Tony rattled it off without really looking at the menu.  Green tea (hot, not cold) and the mozzarella and pesto panini for Bruce, and coffee and a turkey and avocado on whole wheat for Tony.  And garlic fries, with extra garlic.

The tea came in its own little ceramic teapot, loose-leaf sencha, and Bruce knew that’s why Tony chose this place.  He relaxed even more into the surprisingly comfortable metal chair, cradling the teacup in both hands to warm them and letting the steam curl up into his face.  The tea smelled fresh and grassy with a toasty hint, the perfect counter note to the autumn chill.

 They sat in silence, which suited Bruce just fine.  He leaned back in his chair and let it take his weight, pressing his feet flat on the floor to feel it grounding him and connecting him to the earth.  It was an old meditation trick, to help stay present and keep himself in the moment; and at this moment, he wanted nothing more than to be here, with Tony.

Tony noticed.  His quick eyes rarely missed anything, and he was more strongly attuned to Bruce’s body language than ever.  Tony inched his outer leg forward until the inside of his shin rested against Bruce’s calf, gently blocking him from the world outside the little café porch, making him feel safe and protected.  He took his phone out of his pocket and slumped back in his chair as he thumbed the screen; to anyone else, he would look rude and distracted, but Bruce just leaned his leg further against Tony’s to feel that wall of strength push right back and he was happy.

The lunch crowd started filtering out of the restaurant, hustling back to work in that singularly New York fashion.  The sidewalks were full for a few minutes with men in suits and women in heels, most of them with a phone to their ear, some of them clutching white take-out coffee cups to warm their hands and give them that extra boost of caffeine to get through the afternoon.  One woman with a long, blonde and pink ponytail winked as she passed by their table.  Tony did that to people. 

Tony snorted and peeked up over the edge of his phone.  “That was for you,” he said.

Bruce sipped his tea to hide his smile.  “I doubt it.”

“She came from behind me, and she was looking right at you.”

“Think she liked what she saw?” He tried to sound flirtatious, but it came out self-depreciating instead and he winced at sound of his own voice.

“I sure do.” Tony rubbed their ankles together to punctuate his point.

Bruce was saved from having to answer by the arrival of the waitress with their food.  Bruce thanked her and was rewarded with a smile. 

The food looked perfect and Tony dove into the fries like they were the food of the gods.  Which they just might be, Bruce thought as he bit into one, crisp and golden and covered with minced garlic and flecks of sea salt.  The sandwiches were good, too, but Bruce managed to take only a few bites before his stomach started to roil.  He forced himself to take two more bites, but the thought of eating any more made him feel even worse.  More tea and a few deep breaths of cool air helped keep the food in his stomach.

Tony reached across the table and pulled the plate away.   He had been eating slowly, watching Bruce and matching him bite for bite, so he still had most of his sandwich left, too.

“We’ll take it to go,” Tony said, popping a few more fries into his mouth.

Bruce nodded.  If he stuck it in the communal fridge, it would disappear before dinner.  Maybe Tony would even believe that he ate it.

Tony pulled his phone out again and leaned his chin on one hand as he typed with the other, munching on fries in between commands.  He didn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry to get back to the Tower.

“Tony?”

The phone snapped shut and disappeared.  “Yes, Bruce?”

“When we get back, could I use one of the labs for some private research?”

“Of course.  You don’t have to ask for that.  There are a few labs that aren’t in use right now.  Did you have any particular one in mind?”

“One out of the way…out of everyone’s way.”

A mischievous smile lit Tony’s face.  “How _private_ is this research?”

“I don’t want to cause any trouble.”

“That’s a damn shame.”  He sounded truly disappointed.  “Tell JARVIS what you need and he’ll get you set up.  You’ll need a dedicated server and an expense account.  He’ll hook you up, so don’t be shy.”

“That’s it?”

“I don’t know.  Is it?”

Bruce shrugged.  “I thought you’d at least want to know what I’m doing.”

“Of course I do, but I figure you’ll tell me if you want me to know.  Unless you’re like, cooking meth or something.  That shit is hard to get out of the walls.”

Bruce almost choked on his tea.  “No, nothing like that.”

“Well then, we’re good.” He leaned across the table a little.  “I don’t run a research university.  There are no grant proposals involved, no deadlines, no reports to write.  Do what you want, publish what you want, patent what you want.  Or don’t.”

“I want to do some more work with RG-27,” Bruce blurted out. 

“Ah…fuck.” Tony pushed himself back and crossed his arms over his chest.  He closed his eyes for a second and his expression was guarded when he opened them again.  “Is it safe?”

“It’s not volatile, and the ingredients are all legal.”

“No, Brucie.  Is it safe for _you_?”

Bruce shrugged and looked down at his hands clasped in his lap.  “I’ve worked with it before.”

Tony changed tactics.  “Why now?” he asked.

That was a better question, and Bruce wasn’t sure how to respond to it.  He couldn’t come up with anything other than the truth.  “I don’t know what the long-term effects are.  I want to know if there are any…problems…I should be looking out for.”  Like continuing auditory hallucinations.

Tony nodded slowly.  “That’s not a bad idea.  But, Bruce…”

“Yeah, Tony?” He was going to tell Bruce not to do it, he just knew it.

“Be careful,” Tony finished.

“I am being careful.  That’s why I need to do this.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, as always, for the wonderful comments and encouragement!


	4. Ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce gets his new lab, and Steve tries to get him back into his old routine. But that doesn't stop his demons from haunting him.

 

The lab JARVIS led Bruce to was very out of the way, just as Bruce requested.  He turned down so many hallways that he wasn’t even sure he was in the same _building_ anymore, and he had to press his palm print to three different security doors along the way.  Perhaps, he thought, Tony was joking with him.  He wouldn’t be too surprised to find that the twisting path led to a misplaced bathroom or a storage closet.

But then he came upon a black steel door with a frosted window.  “Dr. Bruce Banner” was etched into the thick glass.  Bruce paused.  There was no way that Tony had enough time to have it done in the few minutes before leaving the restaurant and returning to the Tower.  It must have been here before he even asked to use a lab.  This lab wasn’t just empty, out of the way workroom; it was _meant_ for him.  He reached out to touch the lettering, but the door clicked open when his hand came close.  He pushed it the rest of the way open and stepped inside.

The lab was cavernous.  The ceiling was as high as the one in Tony’s shop—he could conceivably fly the Iron Man suit in here.  There were no windows, but the ceiling panels emitted light as clear as sunshine, which reflected off the stainless steel countertops and the floor that looked like polished granite.  Bruce was used to dingy, cluttered university labs, and spartan military facilities…this laboratory looked like a work of art.

 There were banks of equipment, electron scanning microscopes, and holographic projectors. A section of the wall was lined with gas tanks.  In the back, there was a miniature shop set up for machining anything he didn’t have on hand, and the biggest 3D printer Bruce had ever seen.  Bruce randomly opened some cupboards and drawers to find every size and kind of beaker, container, flask, and pipette he could ever want.

Bruce’s mind flashed back to Brazil, to the bicycle-tire centrifuge and discarded high school biology microscope he had scavenged.  At that time, setting foot in a real laboratory had been nothing more than a fragile wish.  And now…now he had more equipment than he knew what to do with.

“Doctor Banner?” JARVIS asked.

Bruce was startled out of his reverie.  “Yes?”

“Mr. Stark has informed me that I am to order whatever you want or need without first seeking his approval.  And there is a private server dedicated to your research and projects.  Mr. Stark made it very clear that no one is to access it without your permission, including Mr. Stark himself.  I have taken the liberty of transferring your current files.”

Bruce glanced around the room, looking for JARVIS’s sensor array.  He was sure there were multiple, probably integrated into the building’s framework, but he could find no obvious sign of a camera or microphone, or even a speaker.

“JARVIS, how long has Tony been setting this up?”

“Since the remodeling of Stark Tower,” JARVIS replied, and his electronic voice held a note of surprise, as if the answer was obvious.

“Over a year?  Why hasn’t he...he never said anything about it.”

“Perhaps he was waiting for the right moment.”

The corner of Bruce’s mouth curved up in a small smile.  “Well, what do you say we get to work?”

There was a white lab coat on a peg by the door.  He shrugged it on.  It fit perfectly.

“As you wish.  And, Doctor Banner?”

“Yes, JARVIS?”

“Welcome home.”

****

Hours passed like minutes as Bruce explored his new laboratory.  He found most of what he needed already on hand, and JARVIS assured him that he could have whatever he lacked delivered by the end of the day.  The ingredients for the RG-27 were rather common, which was one reason why Bruce had explored the possibilities of using it to suppress his gamma-irradiated side; even though it took near-constant exposure to neutralize the gamma in his blood, it wasn’t difficult to make it in large amounts.

Of course, that had also made it impossible to trace how Ross had created the compounds that kept him from Hulking out while he was in captivity—the General could have gotten it from anywhere.

Bruce shook his head to keep himself from going down that line of thought.  He was dead, and Bruce was free, and there wasn’t anything he could do to hurt Bruce now.  His time and energy were worth too much to devote to worrying about the past. 

But, a small voice inside him said, if that was true, then he wouldn’t be in the lab to begin with.  Ross _was_ still hurting him, even now.  And the quicker he could figure out how to deal with the side effects of the RG-27 exposure, the safer his friends would be. 

Then again, if his hypothesis was wrong, and the hallucinations were _not_ from the RG-27…well, then…he didn’t want to think of that. 

Bruce got back to work.

****

“Doctor Banner, Mr. Stark is paging you.”

Bruce rubbed his eyes.  He had no idea what time it was.  There were no clocks in the room, and he wasn’t wearing his watch.  He swiped his hand across the surface of the nearest tablet and read that it was almost midnight.  Huh.  He had been in the lab for over ten hours, but it certainly didn’t feel like it.

“Put him through, JARVIS.”

The tablet blinked to life and Tony’s image appeared on the screen.  He was in his own shop, grease-stained, with a pair of thick welding goggles pushed up across his forehead. 

“Hey, Big Guy,” Tony said.  “I take it you approve of the new facilities?”

“Candyland, for sure,” Bruce said with a tired smile.  Tony’s return smile was bright.  “I think I missed dinner.”

“Is JARVIS taking care of you?”

“Yeah, I have everything I need.  The rest of it was delivered a few hours ago.”

“Good, good.”  Tony ran his hand through his hair and the grease made it stick up in little points.  He looked over to the side of the screen before speaking again.  “It’s, uh, getting late.  I was thinking of turning in.  Do you want to come up and keep me company? Are you at a good stopping point?”

Bruce glanced over to the collection of bubbling beakers and the thick green solution collecting in the last flask, leaving a white precipitate settling to the bottom.  He bit his lip.  He could let the solution finish collecting and then use the centrifuge to separate the sediment in the morning.

“I will be,” Bruce said, turning back to the screen.  “Twenty more minutes?  Give me a chance to clean up?”

Tony scratched at a burn mark on his cheek.  “Ok.  Meet you upstairs?”

“See you there.”

The screen went dark, but Bruce looked at it for a long moment.  So Tony still wanted him in his bed.  The thought made Bruce’s heart a little lighter.  He didn’t want to admit it to himself, but he had been afraid that the previous night was a one-time deal, out of pity.  But no, Tony still wanted him.

The solution was almost finished collecting, so Bruce started dismantling what he could, loading the glassware into the automatic dishwasher and putting away the jugs of chemical components into their proper cabinets.  At last, he shut off the burners and used a set of metal tongs to take the beaker of solution over to the fume hood to cool. 

“Bruce? Be careful!” a clear, female voice called out to him.  It was Betty, Bruce swore it was Betty.  He would never forget her sweet, teasing voice.

Bruce spun around, looking around for the source of the noise, but no one was there.  As he turned around again, his foot caught on the edge of a stool and it scraped along the floor with a loud screech.  Bruce stumbled and the solution sloshed over the edge of the beaker and splattered on his hands and arms.  He gasped as the hot liquid burned his skin, but he managed not to drop it. 

“Damn it, stupid Banner,” Bruce muttered.  The solution was harmless, but the sickly sweet smell of it made him nauseous.  The memories associated with that smell were strong, but Bruce forced his mind elsewhere before he could be sucked into that swirling vortex of thoughts.  At least he hadn’t spilled all of it and ruined the day’s work.

He washed his hands in the sink and pushed up his sleeves to examine his hands.  The skin was red, but it wasn’t burned badly.  The cold water was enough to calm the inflammation.  Still, not even one full day in his own lab and he was already making a mess.

Bruce wiped up the green liquid off the floor with a towel and tossed it in the sink.  He would deal with that in the morning. 

****

By the time Bruce arrived at the penthouse, Tony had showered and changed into a soft black tank top and loose cotton pants that rode low on his hips and dragged a bit under his heels.  He was standing at the bar, mixing a whiskey and soda.  There was a line of frustration drawn between his eyebrows, but it disappeared when he looked up to see Bruce standing in front of him.

“Hi Honey.  Have a good day at the office?”

Bruce smiled as he pulled himself up onto a bar stool.  “Yeah.  That’s some lab you just happened to find for me.”

Tony took a sip from his drink to cover the small smile that appeared on his lips. 

“And,” Bruce continued, “it just happened to have my name on the door.”

“Imagine that,” Tony replied.

“You never told me about it.”

Tony gestured towards him with the tumbler.  “Good lab partners are hard to find.  I didn’t want to lose you, and I had a feeling that once you were back in your element, you wouldn’t want to come back to some dirty old garage.”

Bruce snorted.  Tony’s “garage” was the most pristine and technologically advanced workshops he had ever seen. 

“I’ll still come by and give DUM-E an oil change every once in a while,” Bruce said.  “If the incentive is good enough.”

Tony’s eyes twinkled, and his smile turned into a sultry smirk.  “What kind of bait should I use?”

Bruce shrugged.  “Oh, I don’t know.  I’ve heard that blatant bribery works pretty well.  Maybe that new model of electron scanning microscope…”

“Yeah?” Tony said in a low voice.  He leaned a little over the counter towards Bruce.  “What else, Big Boy?”

“A metallic magnetic microcaliometer?”

Tony leaned closer.  “Tell me more…”

“Cooler synchrotron…”

Tony reached across the bar and grabbed Bruce’s shirt, drawing him closer until their lips were almost touching.

“…high-energy spectrometer…”

Tony kissed him, a hard press of lips before backing off and urging his mouth open with a soft sweep of his tongue.  Bruce allowed his lips to part, and Tony followed through, leaving the taste of stale whiskey in his mouth.  He could smell it on Tony’s breath, too, ketone-sweet like half-digested carbohydrates. 

And, suddenly, Bruce’s mind was gone, swept decades away on the tide of memory.  He choked on the whiskey fumes and pulled back, letting gravity break the hold Tony had on his shirt. 

Tony let go and took a step back.  “Fuck, Bruce, I’m sorry.”

There was a half-wild look in Tony’s eyes, and when Bruce looked down, his hands were trembling.   Fumbling, he sloshed the contents of the half-empty tumbler down the sink.

Bruce’s hands gripped the edge of the bar in a white-knuckled grip.  He was breathing fast, and he inhaled deeply, chest shaking with the effort.

 “It’s ok,” Bruce said.  “It’s not your fault.”  He forcibly unclenched his fingers and moved them to his lap.  “I should go.”

“No!” Tony said.  “That was stupid of me, Bruce.  I wasn’t thinking. I…just…I missed you in the lab, Bruce.”

Bruce suppressed the sigh that threatened to escape.  He had driven Tony to drinking again, after he had cut back so much.  Then again, Bruce wasn’t his guardian, and if Tony wanted to drink, then he had every right to; there was no reason for Tony to throw away his drink.  But, either way, it was Bruce’s fault.  Tony was just trying to relax and enjoy his night, and Bruce had ruined it. 

It was too much.  Memories of his father, hiding just under of his consciousness all day, bubbled to the surface.  So many times he had blamed Bruce for making him drink, either for something he did or something he failed to do.   For bringing undue attention to himself.  For being the reason his mother was dead.  For being a freak.  For just being _Robert._

Tony looked lost, too-large eyes framed by long lashes and dark bruises.  He looked scared, and for a split second, Bruce was looking through his father’s eyes at a frightened young boy.  Tony wasn’t the monster here.  Bruce was.

“Tony, it’s not your fault.  I’m sorry.”

And Bruce left.

****

Bruce lay in bed that night, not sleeping, but not quite awake either.  If he fell asleep, he would dream, and he already knew what would haunt him.  So he let himself drift, counting his breaths to try to keep his thoughts from spiraling down the same paths over and over again.

It worked—mostly.  If he kept his eyes away from the shadows in the room, he could keep himself from thinking of hiding in the dark, under the bed, in the closet when he grew too big to squeeze into the small space between the mattress and the floor.  When he couldn’t stay in bed anymore, he sank onto the wooden floor and tried to meditate.  That worked for a while, too, but it began to work too well and he started to fall asleep.

A few times, he considered going back to his lab to keep working, but he knew he was exhausted and he had already had one accident in the lab that evening.  He needed to sleep, but every time he closed his eyes, he saw that hurt look on Tony’s face and he remembered who put it there.

So he stared at the ceiling and waited for dawn.

****

At some point, Bruce must have fallen asleep because the next thing he knew, Steve was shaking him awake.  He mumbled and curled up tighter, but something landed on the pillow next to his with a loud thump.  Cracking open one eye, he saw a brand new pair of grey and purple running shoes.

“Come on, Bruce,” Steve said.  “Let’s go out and get some food to make breakfast.”

Bruce sat up slowly and blinked hard to clear his vision.  Steve was waiting patiently in the bedroom doorway, arms crossed loosely over his chest.

“I don’t think I can keep up anymore,” Bruce said, voice sore and scratchy from lack of sleep.

Steve shrugged with one shoulder.  “We’ll walk.”

Bruce looked back down at the shoes.  They used to have a routine: get up early, go for a run, come home and make breakfast.  But now the sight of the new shoes just made Bruce feel tired.  He looked back at Steve, and excuse on the tip of his tongue, but Steve beat him to it and spoke first.

“Please, Bruce.  Come with me.  The farmer’s market is going to close for the winter.  We’re not going to have a lot of chances to go there after today.”

Bruce sighed.  Thinking of a valid excuse was going to take more energy than just giving in to his request.  Besides, he couldn’t say no to Captain America.  It would be like barbequing a bald eagle or something.

So Bruce found himself walking the few blocks to the farmer’s market.  Steve carried the backpack and the canvas shopping bags slung over his shoulder.  The new shoes felt good, but a little stiff.  Even when Bruce bought new shoes, they were usually used or cast-offs.  He forgot that they required breaking-in.

Steve, thank God, wasn’t in the mood for conversation and didn’t press Bruce to talk.  The silence was welcome, though all Bruce could think about was how horribly he treated Tony the night before.  He tried to write his apology in his head as he walked.  He would tell Tony that he appreciated the invitation to sleep in the penthouse (because he did) and that he didn’t want Tony to think that he couldn’t drink around Bruce (because it didn’t bother him all that much) and that he had just overreacted because he was tired (he was still pretty tired, actually).

By the time they reached the market, the sun was high in the sky and Bruce was pretty sure he knew what he was going to say to Tony when they returned.  The morning chill had mostly burned off, and the sunshine felt good on the back of Bruce’s neck.  The light and fresh air helped to chase away his fatigue, though he did notice how Steve shortened his stride just a bit when Bruce started to slow down.

The market had changed since Bruce had been away.  When he was last here it had been late summer, and the stalls had been packed with vendors and customers.  Now, there were only a few people perusing the produce.  Even the colors had changed.  Instead of the vibrant greens and reds of summer fruit, there were darker, duskier shades of orange pumpkins, leafy kale, and broccoli.  The berries were mostly gone, replaced by apples and oranges and pears. 

They walked up and down the row, collecting whatever looked good at the moment without thinking much about any particular menu.  Steve was getting pretty good at throwing a bunch of ingredients together and making something unexpectedly delicious.

“It’s a combination of Great Depression survival skills and the Food Network,” Steve said.  “But I’m still glad to have you around so I don’t look like a fool.  Like, what this thing?”

Bruce glanced at the brown, round root thing in Steve’s hand.  “Jicama,” he said.  “It’s crisp like celery and apples.”

Steve nodded sagely but put it back.  He headed across the street to a cheese stand they frequented.  They had a whole new variety of goat cheese with dried apricots, and Steve was coerced into trying it, but Bruce turned it down.  He still wasn’t feeling well from the previous day, and he didn’t think eating strange cheese would help much.

“Bruce!” someone called from behind him.

Bruce turned slowly, wondering who would possibly know him here.  Sure, he had talked to some of the vendors before, but he didn’t think he knew his name.

He didn’t see anyone he recognized, and there weren’t very many people around, so he ignored it. Another hallucination, he thought.

“Bruce!”

It was Betty again.  Oh well, there were worse demons to be haunted by.

“Bruce Banner, come here!”

This was getting old.  Bruce turned around, as if he could give the hallucination a piece of his mind.

And there was Betty, standing a few feet away.  She was wearing a white peacoat and fluffy white beret over her long, dark hair.  She was smiling.  It was Betty.

She beckoned to him.  “Come on, quick, before he notices!”

Bruce froze.  Steve was still talking to the cheese guy.  He wasn’t paying any attention anyway.

“Betty?” Bruce asked aloud.

“Shh!  Silly, come here, I need to tell you something.”

Bruce glanced back at Steve.  The market wasn’t very big.  He would see Bruce once he turned around.  So he walked towards Betty.

She took off, hiding behind a stall of fruit preserves.  Bruce followed, peering around the corner.  She was there, waving to him.

“I can’t tell you here,” she said.  “Come on!”

“Betty, what are you doing here?” Bruce hissed in a stage whisper.

“You have to follow me!  I’ll show you!”

“But Steve…”

“Bruce, I flew all the way here and found you so I could tell you in person.  I can’t tell anyone else.  You have to trust me!”

That was it.  Betty was here, and she had something to tell him, and he trusted Betty with his life.  He followed.

They ran down the street, Betty just in front of him.  He could touch her if he just went a little faster, she was _right there_ , and he forgot how much he missed her until he saw her red lips and the curl of her dark brown hair.  The ends of her white wool coat flapped behind her and she smiled when she looked back to see if he was following.

“How much farther?” Bruce asked.  He didn’t want to ask where they were going in case that was part of the secret.

“Just across the street,” Betty said.  “Are you ready?”

“Yes!” Bruce said.

She stepped off the curb and Bruce followed, running right after her.  He reached out to take her hand, to feel her small, strong fingers curl around his, but just as he was about to make contact, she disappeared.

Bruce stopped, halfway to the other side of the street, but he couldn’t see her anywhere.  She had just vanished.

The blaring of a horn made Bruce turn to look to his side, just in time to see a bus barreling towards him.  Time stood still as Bruce realized that he had nowhere to run, there was no way he could move fast enough to get out of its way, and the bus’s breaks weren’t strong enough to stop it in time.  The Other Guy roared to life inside of him, and he thought, no, please, not here, not now, there were too many people and the Hulk was going to destroy that bus and everyone on it.  Bruce threw up his hands across his face, shut his eyes, and pressed _down_ on his rage as strongly as he could.

A strong impact from the side knocked him to the ground, and then he was rolling, rolling fast and there was asphalt and sky and something solid and warm surrounding him.  When he stopped tumbling, he was face down on the street, and there was a heavy pressure across his back, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t dead, but the Other Guy wasn’t quite convinced, and he could feel his limbs creak and bulge as he fought for control.

“Not here, Bruce, not now,” Steve’s voice was right in his ear, and his hands wrapped around Bruce’s biceps, curling tighter around him as if he could keep Bruce inside of himself.

“You’re ok, Bruce,” Steve was saying, low and calm.  “Everything is just fine.  You’re ok.”

And slowly, slowly, the words sank in, as if the Other Guy was actually listening to Steve.  His fists loosened and his jaw unclenched as he drew in deep gulps of air.  In through his nose, out through his mouth, just like he had been taught.

When Bruce was finally calm again, he opened his eyes to see Steve’s blue eyes staring right back at him.  The soldier was curled around him, blocking him from view of the small crowd that had gathered.  Traffic was stopped both ways, and some people were standing beside their running cars.  The bus driver hovered a few feet away.

“Bruce,” Steve said, firmer now that he knew he had his attention.  “Are your hurt anywhere?”

“I…I don’t know.  Am I bleeding?”

“I don’t think so.  Can you get up?”

“I think so.”

“Ok, let’s get out of the street.”

A low murmur of relief rose from the crowd as Steve helped him to his feet.  His legs were shaky, and his hips felt bruised, but he didn’t feel hurt.

“Hey man,” the bus driver said as they passed.  “Is he ok?  Should I radio for the ambulance?”

Steve wrapped one strong arm around Bruce’s shoulders to hold him steady and waved to the driver with the other.  “No, no.  I’ll get him to the doctor.”

“I’m real sorry, man,” the drive continued, following them up to the sidewalk.  “He just ran right out in front of me.  I barely even saw him.”

Steve glanced over Bruce’s head at him.  “I know.  It was an accident.  No one was hurt.  Just an accident.”

“Yeah, well, be more careful, ok?”

Steve nodded, but Bruce was trembling too badly to give any sign of thanks.  Steve led him to the bus stop bench and sat him down.  Traffic moved on now that the road was clear, and the small crowd quickly dispersed once they realized that they weren’t in need of help.

Steve crouched in front of Bruce.  “Bruce, what happened?”

His voice wouldn’t work right away, and it took a few deep breaths before he managed to answer.  “It was Betty.  She was right there.  I followed her.”

Steve rubbed his hand over his mouth, leaving a dark stain of dirt on his chin. 

“Bruce, I was right behind you…there wasn’t anyone there.  You ran out into the street in front of a moving bus.”

“She was right there!” Bruce pointed to the middle of the street.  “I saw her!”

Steve’s expression turned soft, and that, more than anything, told Bruce that he was right.

He buried his head in his hands.  “She was right there!” he cried.  “I saw her there.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much, lovely readers, for taking the time to comment. You are very appreciated.


	5. Be Kind to Yourself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce and Steve talk, and Bruce and Tony reconcile in their own way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry about the last update and short chapter, but life is crazy right now (as it is for most people around this time of year). Hopefully I will be able to update more frequently over the next couple of weeks.

Steve guided Bruce home with an arm wrapped protectively around his shoulders.  Bruce allowed himself to be steered along; his brain felt like it was so full of static that he couldn’t quite process what had just happened.  He had seen Betty, clear as day, and he had been so distracted that he stepped out in front of a bus.  The fact that he might have been hit didn’t shake him as much as the thoughts of the repercussions of being hit. 

They walked in silence.  Steve didn’t slow or say anything, though he did look down at Bruce with wide, blue eyes whenever he stumbled on a steep curb or a piece of broken sidewalk.  Bruce didn’t protest as he was led into a side entrance of the Tower and straight into the elevator.

“JARVIS, take us to my apartment, please,” Steve said.

Bruce glanced up, but Steve stared straight ahead, and everything about his posture said that he wasn’t going to entertain questions or arguments, so he stayed silent.  Steve’s arm was still held loosely around Bruce’s shoulders and he squeezed once, but didn’t say a word.

Bruce had never been inside Steve’s rooms.  Steve spent most of his time in the common rooms on a different floor, so he never really had a reason to venture to his apartment before.  It was smaller than he thought it would be—even Bruce’s rooms were bigger—but it was larger than quarters on the helicarrier or Army barracks would be.  Still, since Steve was the team captain, Bruce just assumed he would have a room suiting his rank.

Then again, the room suited _Steve_ just fine.  The northern wall opened up into floor-to-ceiling windows that let in the best light and gave him a wide view of the city below.  The walls were a warm vanilla color, and the plush carpet was a deep blue.  Deep, comfortable couches surrounded an entertainment center with a flat screen TV.  He was a little surprised at how modern the appliances were—for some reason he was half expecting to walk into some Americana museum display, but the most vintage part of the room was the impressive row of records that filled the bottom shelf of the entertainment cabinet.

Steve pushed him down on one of the couches, and Bruce could immediately tell that it was where he spent a lot of his time because there was an assortment of sketches tacked hastily to the wall.  They were all done in black and white, some in pencil, others in charcoal or ink.  Most were members of the team, but a few were of people Bruce didn’t recognize.

The couch dipped as Steve sat down next to him.  He had a wet towel in his hand.  He took Bruce’s hands and turned them over in his, then started to rub the dirt stains away.  The towel was pleasantly warm and rough, and Steve was careful not to rub too hard.

“Can you tell me what happened?” Steve asked, and it seemed like an honest question because Bruce couldn’t answer right away.

“JARVIS doesn’t listen in here,” Steve said after a few moments passed.  “You can say whatever you want and it won’t get back to Tony.”

Bruce nodded, but he needed the right words to come before he opened his mouth.  He was

crazy, he knew he was crazy, but he didn’t want Steve to know just yet.  Not until he was sure.

“I wasn’t paying attention to the traffic,” Bruce said at last.

Steve nodded, but kept his eyes down, rubbing the skin on the inside of Bruce’s wrists.  “What distracted you?”

“I thought I saw someone I knew.  She said she wanted to tell me something.”

“You heard her speak to you?”

“Yeah.  As if she was right in front of me.”

“I’m not saying she wasn’t there, Bruce, but I didn’t see anyone in the street other than you.”

Bruce pulled his hand away so he could run it through his hair.  He took a deep, shaky breath.  “I’m pretty sure she wasn’t real,” he said. 

Steve looked up at that, but there was no judgment in his eyes.  He waited for Bruce to continue. 

“That stuff…that RG-27 Ross had me on?”

Steve’s eyes hardened.  “Yes.  That green gas.”

“Yes.  It made me…makes me…hear things and see things.”

“But it’s been weeks since…”

“I know.  But there might have been long-term effects that I didn’t know about.  So I’m looking into it.  But I was in the lab last night, and I spilled some on my skin, so maybe it made the hallucinations stronger.”

Steve leaned against the back of the couch, regarding Bruce with that piercing blue gaze.  “How long has this been going on?”

“A few days.”

“Does Tony know?”

“Oh God, no.”

Steve rubbed his chin with his hand.  “Did something happen between you and him?”

Bruce took a deep breath.  “Yeah.  Last night.  I walked out on him because he was drinking.”

Steve’s eyebrows quirked up a little.  “He was still working when I woke up to find you.  I think that’s where he was all night.  How about you? Did you sleep?”

Bruce shrugged.  “Not really.”

“How about eating?  When’s the last time you ate?”

A long moment passed as Bruce tried to remember.  He hadn’t eaten when Steve woke him up, or the night before…”around lunch time yesterday.”

Steve shook his head and stood.

“I don’t think I could eat anything right now.  My stomach is in knots,” Bruce confessed.

But he could see Steve in the kitchen.  He took a carton of milk from the refrigerator, along with a bottle of chocolate syrup.  He placed them both on the counter, then opened a cupboard and took out two big glasses and a huge container of isolate whey protein from the top shelf.  Bruce watched as he mixed up chocolate milk and added a few scoops of the protein powder to each glass.

“Here,” he said when he returned, shoving a glass into Bruce’s hand, “drink this.”

“Chocolate milk?” Bruce asked dubiously.

Steve gave him a sharp look, then fished between the couch cushions and came up with a Men’s Health magazine.  He shook it open to an article on post-workout recovery foods and pointed to a subheading on chocolate milk.

“Research,” he said.

Bruce sipped from the glass.  It was pretty good, sweet and cold, and the protein powder thickened it so that he could feel the weight of the liquid slide down his throat.

“I’m not a doctor,” Steve said quietly, “but you’re more like me than anyone else here.  Heck, probably more than anyone else on the planet.”

Bruce nearly choked on the milk.  “How am I _anything_ like you?”

Steve blinked hard.  “Ok, we don’t look the same, I’ll give you that.  But your body and my body work the same way.  You need more calories and energy than a normal human being.  Just like me, you can survive for longer without food, but when it’s going in full swing, your metabolism requires a lot to maintain itself.  And you’ve been in starvation mode for weeks.”

That was true.  On the run, finding meals had been difficult, and he had always felt hungry, no matter how much he ate.  And after a transformation, it felt like he could never eat enough to fill the hole the Other Guy left behind.  He took another long swig of chocolate milk.

“If you’re not taking care of yourself, your body can betray you.  Stress is harder to deal with, which only makes you feel worse and eat less and sleep less.”

“More research?”

“Yes.  I read up on PTSD.  That’s what the SHIELD psychologists told me I had when I first woke up.”

“Oh.  Do you think I have it?”

“I’m not a doctor, Bruce.  What do you think?”

Bruce looked down at his chocolate milk. There were tiny bubbles on the surface of the liquid, pressed up against the side of the glass.

“I think we all have it.”

“Then what would you tell _me_ if I was seeing things and hearing things that weren’t there?”

Bruce smiled despite the sick feeling in his gut.  “I would tell you to take care of yourself.  To eat, sleep, exercise, take it easy…and to not be too hard on yourself.”

Steve nodded and took a deep drink from his own glass.  “Sounds like good advice, Doc.  So, here’s how I see it.  Tony should know, if for no other reason than because he cares about you, but I shouldn’t be the one to tell him.  So I’m not going to tell him; I’m not going to tell anybody about our conversation, unless I absolutely need to.  But you have to do something for me in return.”

Bruce couldn’t hide his sigh of relief.  “What do you want me to do?”

Steve ducked his head so he could catch Bruce’s gaze.  His blue eyes were kind but firm.  “You have to work out with me when I ask you to, and you have to make time for it even if you’re busy.  And you have to eat at least once a day with me.”

Bruce closed his eyes.  At first, his anger flared at Steve’s attempt to control him…but after that brief moment, he saw Steve’s request for what it was—a friend reaching out to help him and support him.

“Ok.  I can do that.”

Steve draped an arm across his shoulders and brought him in for a half-hug.  “It’s ok, Bruce.  You’ll figure this out.  You’re the smartest guy I know, and you’ll beat this.”

****

Bruce’s hands were sweating.  He was nervous.  JARVIS had told him that this was a good time, that Tony was busy, but he wasn’t interrupting.  Still, Bruce had to swallow down a brief bought of nausea.

The workshop door swung open when he approached.  So JARVIS wasn’t going to give him any time to reconsider and run.  He was immediately greeted with the screech of electric guitars and overpowering drumbeats, but his eyes found Tony standing with his back to the door, manipulating a hologram of the Mark XVIII with both hands.

Bruce swallowed.  At least the loud music covered the sound of his footsteps as he approached and gave him a moment to figure out how he was going to interrupt.

Then the music cut out. Damn JARVIS.

“Hey!  Who shut off my music,” Tony shouted as he turned towards the door.  But both his expression and his voice softened when he saw Bruce.  “Hey buddy—didn’t think it was you.”

Bruce’s carefully crafted apology fled as soon as Tony locked eyes with him. He read everything that he wanted to say in that gaze—sorrow, regret, loss, a promise of something else, something better, if he just managed to hold on for a little longer.  But all he managed to say in return was a lame, “hey Tony.”

Tony collapsed the hologram with an absent wave of his hand.  He scratched the back of his head and let his hand drop down to his side.  “I…uh…took your advice about the radar absorption.  I think I have it figured out, but I could use a little help refining the compound.”

Bruce paused.  Tony’s posture was open, welcoming, hands down by his side, palms out, shoulders loose.  For a long second, Bruce wanted to tell him everything, about the hallucinations, about his fears, about what had happened while he was in Ross’s lab, which he tried so hard to not remember yet couldn’t force himself to forget.  It was all stuck in his throat, and nothing he could do would force out the words.  So he swallowed them back down and went with something safe and familiar instead.

“Show me where you’re at with the compound.”

And Tony perked up, pulling up files and models and charts, talking a mile a minute while Bruce let his familiar voice wash over him.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Holidays to all! Bruce and Tony and Steve wish everyone a peaceful and restful holiday!


	6. When I'm on My Knees I Still Believe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce and Tony start to take back what they've lost.

The smell of oil and hot metal permeated the air along with the heavier chemical scent of the black paint coating…well, everything.  Bruce had it under his fingernails, in the creases of his skin, and he could feel it in his hair where he had absently run his hands through it.  Tony looked worse.  His forearms were nearly coated in it, and there were streaks across his face disappearing into his beard.  Even DUM-E had rolled through it at one point and left tread marks like animal tracks across the floor.

But Tony was smiling broadly as he stood with his hands on his hips, turning his head from side to side as he admired the now-black Mark XVIII.

“Next time, we’re getting JARVIS to spray paint it,” Bruce said decisively.  He ran his thumbnail around the cuticles of his left fingers, trying to chip away the drying paint.

“It would clog the sprayers,” Tony replied, still not taking his eyes off the suit.  “This stuff is like tar.”

“No kidding.”

“There’s a pumice stone in the sink,” Tony said.

Bruce went over to the shop sink to scrub his hands before the paint could dry any more.  He felt like a mess, greasy, dirty, exhausted…but at the same time, he felt better than he had in days.  The voices and visions left him alone all afternoon, though it was hard to hear anything over the volume of Tony’s music.  Which, he mused, was probably the whole point.  They fell easily into their old patterns and habits in the lab, as if nothing had ever happened between them.  It felt right and normal and easy.  Sure, he was tired, but it was the well-earned type of tired that came from a day of work and not the empty, draining type of tired that dogged him too often. 

Tony was still entranced by the suit’s new paint job when Bruce was done scrubbing up.  Bruce knew that he itched to put it on and test it, maybe even get Clint to chase him around for a bit in the quinjet to test the radar absorption levels.

Tony crossed his arms and glanced over to Bruce.  “What are you thinking, Big Guy.”

“That as soon as the paint’s dry, you and Clint are going to have the most epic game of hide-and-go-seek ever.”

Tony’s eyebrows shot up and his mouth opened in a wide O.  “JARVIS!  What’s the estimated time before the paint cures?”

“At least 24 hours, Sir.  I do hope you can wait that long.  May I suggest another activity to keep your mind off the temptation?  Perhaps the sleep you have been ignoring for the past 36 hours?”

It was Bruce’s turn to raise his eyebrows.  “ _36 hours?”_ he repeated.

“Fucking tattle-tale,” Tony muttered.  “It has _not_ been 36 hours.”

“Would you like an accurate calculation instead of a rough estimate?” JARVIS replied.

“No.”

“As you wish, Sir.”

Tony grabbed a rag that DUM-E waved at him and rubbed ineffectively at the paint on his arms.  “So, what do you say, Brucie?  Bed time?”

Bruce was surprised at how easily his answer came.  “Yeah.  Meet you upstairs after a shower?”

Tony’s shoulders relaxed and the edges of his eyes crinkled when his smile broadened.  “Yeah.  I need to clean up, too.”

The two scientists glanced around the stained shop and then back at each other.   Tony threw the rag back to DUM-E, who managed to catch it in his claw.

“Do your best, DUM-E,” Tony said.

Bruce could swear he heard DUM-E sigh as they headed towards the elevator.

****

Hot water felt divine.  Eventually, Bruce gave up on trying to chip away the paint and leaned his head against the wall as the spray massaged the tension out of his shoulders.  His shower wasn’t nearly as grand as Tony’s, but it was still equipped with the best fixtures he had ever had.  Well, he supposed that didn’t say much because there had been many days when he was grateful for a bucket and a pump that wasn’t iced over.

He titled his head back, letting the water hit his face and flow down his chest.  Now that he was cleaner, he could see where there were darkening bruises where his hip hit the asphalt, and smaller bruises on his shoulders and arms where Steve’s hands had held him.  The only one that really hurt was the one on his hip, and it he felt it only when he pressed on it.  He was lucky…no, not lucky.  He was blessed that Steve had been there watching him.

Quickly, the vision of the bus hurtling towards him flashed behind his eyes, and he almost stumbled backwards.  All day, he had tried not to think of it, of what could have happened if the bus had hit him…briefly, just for a second, he let himself entertain the thought that maybe it really would have killed him.

Some emotion bubbled up through his gut too quickly for him to be able to name it.  It felt like grief, but also was a bit like relief.  It washed up and over him like a wave and one deep sob escaped him before he could choke it back down.  But then it was gone, leaving just the faintest wake of sadness like the ripples of a rock sinking below water. 

Bruce wasn’t sure how long he was in the shower, but it felt like long enough.  He didn’t want to keep Tony waiting, but at the same time, he was hoping that just maybe Tony was tired enough to fall asleep before he got there.  But, as tempting as it felt, he couldn’t hide in the shower forever.

He turned off the tap and took the towel from the rack, stripping the water from his arms and legs before tucking it loosely around his hips.  The room was cloudy with steam, and the floor was warm under his bare feet.

Something big and shadowy caught his peripheral vision, and his head snapped around to the mirror.  The glass was fogged up, but there was a huge, looming shape staring back at him where his reflection should be.  He stepped closer, squinting, but though the image was warped by the steam, it was big and green, and when he reached out to the mirror to wipe away the steam, it reached up, too.

Bruce swiped his hand across the glass—but, no, it was just plain old Bruce Banner staring back after all.  A dark green towel hanging on the hook on the back of the bathroom door created the illusion of a shape in the clouded mirror.  He glanced over his shoulder.  Yup.  Just a towel.

Bruce let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding in a nervous laugh.  The anticipation of hallucinations was making him edgy.  Well, edgier.

Quickly, he pulled on a pair of flannel pants and a t-shirt, ran the towel over his damp hair, and threw the wet towel over the shower wall to dry. 

****

When Bruce arrived in Tony’s penthouse, Tony was already done with his shower.  He had somehow managed to get all the paint off his olive skin, though his skin looked pink and raw where he had scrubbed it.  

Tony was sitting on the couch in the sunken living room, bare feet curled into the white shag carpeting.  It was silent and still in the room—no screens or holograms, no blaring music, just Tony’s quiet breathing as he stared out of the windows at the bright downtown lights and the bridges beyond.

“So, I’ve been thinking,” Tony said as he approached. 

Bruce slowed down.  A thinking Tony could be a very dangerous thing.  “Yes?” Bruce asked hesitantly.

“About us.”

Very dangerous indeed.

“Ok,” Bruce prompted.

“I think we should start over.”

Bruce sucked in a breath.  Start over?  Like, with other people?  With each other?  How far back does “start over” entail?  To the handshake on the helicarrier?  Before that?

“When we first started,” Tony waved his hand in a vague gesture, “doing _things_ together, you could barely stand to be touched.  If I said anything nice to you, you went practically hysterical.”

Bruce slowly moved around the couch so he could sit near Tony.  Not right next to him, but near enough. 

“I wouldn’t say ‘hysterical,’” Bruce replied.

“Ok, freaked the fuck out.”

Bruce pursed his lips. “That’s…more accurate.”

Tony turned so that he was sitting with one knee tucked up on the couch, his ankle under his other leg.  He leaned his head down on the back of the couch, effectively making himself smaller, lower than Bruce.

“Well, let’s start at the beginning and see where things go.  Maybe it’s the same.  Maybe it isn’t.  Either way, we can learn as we go.”  Tony shrugged.  “We worked through this once.  I’m sure we can do it again.”

Bruce’s jaw tightened as he struggled to keep the sudden lump in his throat from breaking his voice.  “What if _I’m_ not the same?  What if I’m broken?”

Pain flashed through Tony’s eyes, but he didn’t move.  “You’re not broken, Bruce.  There’s nothing inside you that needs to be _fixed_.”

Bruce barked out a laugh.  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m giving my professional opinion.  I’m a mechanic.  I’m an expert on broken things, and you, Bruce Banner, are not one of those things.”

Bruce looked away to escape the intensity of Tony’s gaze, but he felt the couch shift as Tony moved a little closer.

“Look, I’m not going to ask you about what happened.  You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to say.  But, I am pretty damn sure that you are as unbreakable as they come.”

“That’s not true, Tony.”

“It’s a theory that hasn’t been disproven yet.”

Bruce sighed but he was able to turn his head back to look at Tony again.  “What if I _can’t_?”

Tony didn’t answer aloud, but his face was suddenly unguarded, and Bruce could see the dark circles under his eyes, the lines across his forehead, and Bruce knew that he was tired, too.  Tony—the live wire that could keep going until long after everyone else had burnt out—was exhausted.  It wasn’t as if Tony never _felt_ tired, it was just that he didn’t let other people see him that way.

Well, except for Bruce.

Slowly, with his eyes on Tony, Bruce slid off the couch and sank to his knees on the thick, soft carpet.  He had always loved the patch of carpet that seemed so at odds with the sleek, streamlined modeling of the rest of the Tower.  It reminded him of Tony, of the way that every part of him was so carefully styled yet he still kept one small part to himself, for his own comfort.  To kneel by Tony’s feet here felt natural and right. 

Tony seemed frozen, as if he was afraid to spook him by moving.  He sucked in a breath, and Bruce realized that he had taken Tony by surprise.  So, he gave Tony a little bit of reassurance by resting his head on the side of Tony’s leg. 

Slowly, as if he was approaching a wild animal, Tony ran the back of his fingers across Bruce’s cheek.  The touch was light, and it felt good…safe.  Bruce willed himself to keep his breath and his body steady as Tony did it again, sweeping his fingers from his temple down the side of his jaw. 

“Can you feel that?” Tony asked.  He scratched Bruce’s hair lightly, just barely scraping his fingernails across Bruce’s scalp.

Bruce nodded against Tony’s leg.

“See?  Not broken.  You work just fine.”

Bruce concentrated on breathing through the pang that shot through him.

“Do you believe me?” Tony asked, softly.

Closing his eyes, Bruce focused on the gentle sweep of Tony’s fingers through his short hair to rub at the back of his neck.   He could feel his shoulders tense, but it was from anticipation and nervousness, and not quite fear.  It didn’t hurt…at least he could tell that much.  That part of him, at least, seemed to work ok.

He nodded. 

Tony didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t stop, either.  He traced repetitive patterns over Bruce’s skin and through his hair until Bruce’s eyes closed and he could feel the small muscles in his face and shoulders start to relax. 

He was drifting, half-asleep already when Tony’s knee nudged his shoulder.

“Hey, sleepy bear, let’s go to bed before I have to carry you,” Tony urged him awake.

“I don’t think you could,” Bruce mumbled.

Tony laughed.  “Well I don’t want to sleep on the couch.”

Bruce stumbled to his feet, and Tony put his arm around his shoulders to keep him steady.  It was nice, letting himself drift in that world between sleep and awake where none of his problems seemed to matter.  He didn’t usually have that luxury.

It was only a few feet to the bedroom, and then he was sitting on the edge of bed.  Tony took off his shirt, and the room was bright with the blue light of the reactor. Bruce blinked.  Tony didn’t usually sleep without a shirt because the light was too bright—not for Bruce, but for Tony himself.

But then Tony’s hands were tugging at the edge of Bruce’s shirt and he knew why—he wanted Bruce’s shirt off, so he was taking his off, too, to be fair.  So Bruce let him pull the t-shirt over his head.

Tony grunted and paused, then wrapped his hand around Bruce’s bicep.  Bruce glanced down and saw Tony’s hand lying over the finger-shaped bruises, obviously left by a hand far bigger and stronger than Tony’s.  Panic flared through his system, and his eyes opened wide as he tried to think of an explanation.

But Tony’s lips curved in a wry smile.  “Steve plays rough, huh?  But it’s good that you’re sparring again.  I guess he isn’t going easy on you, though.”

Bruce nodded, then shook his head, not quite sure of the right answer, but relieved that Tony had come up with an explanation of his own. 

“Lie down,” Tony said, as if Bruce needed even that simple instruction. 

He slid between the sheets, and then Tony was climbing into bed, too, his body warm in contrast to the cold silk.  He inched up behind him until Bruce could feel his breath tickling the little hairs on the back of his neck and across his shoulders.  He shivered.

“You’re ok,” Tony soothed.  “There’s nothing wrong.”

Deep down inside Bruce knew that it was a lie, but just for a little while, if Tony believed it, then he could, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has shared their thoughts and concerns. I couldn't do this without you!


	7. You Have a Friend in Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce and Steve work out, Bruce's experiments don't go the way he expects, and then an unusual guest shows up to team movie night.

“So, I was thinking of, y’know, asking her out,” Steve said as landed punch after punch on the heavy bag.

Bruce was straddling the gym bench, slowly unwinding the cloth wrappings from his knuckles.   He had been at the bag for only a few minutes, but he was sore and tired and soaked in sweat.  Steve assured him that he hadn’t lost his technique, even though his stamina was still on vacation.  He took his victories where he could.

“Like, on a date?”

“Yeah.”  Steve paused.  “Do you think she’d say yes?”

Bruce winced, and he was glad that Steve’s concentration was on the bag and he didn’t see him.  “Uh, well, I’m not the best…”

“So you think she’d say no?”

“I didn’t say that…”

“Well?”

“Just ask!  What’s the worst she could do?”  Steve laughed.  “Oh, yeah, right,” Bruce finished.  “But ask.  Do you have something in mind?”

Steve’s parting punch echoed through the empty gym and rocked the bag on its mounting.  He sat beside Bruce, barely breathing hard, but his cheeks were flushed from exertion.   “I don’t know.”

“What would Bucky do with a girl?”

Steve smiled down at his gloves, and his cheeks went from pink to bright red.  Bruce elbowed him in his very solid ribs.

“Hey!” Steve said.  “Dirty-minded…Bucky would take a girl out to dinner, maybe to a picture.  He took them dancing, too.”

Bruce thought of the dance clubs that Tony frequented, all pounding electronic music and scantily-clad patrons. 

“I’m not too sure you want to take her dancing,” Bruce mused.

“No, probably not.  I never learned how anyway.”

“I don’t think that matters much anymore.  There aren’t too many places left where you can foxtrot.”

Steve nodded and began to pull off his gloves and untape his hands.  “Come on,” he said, nudging Bruce to his feet.  “Weight bench.”

Bruce groaned.  His arms felt like jelly already, but he followed obediently to the bench press in the corner.  He sat on the bench while Steve loaded the bar with a couple twenty-pound plates. 

“Just a few reps,” Steve coaxed.

Bruce groaned again, but he lay down and wrapped his hands around the textured metal of the bar.  He made sure Steve was in a good position to catch it if it fell before lifting it off the pegs.  He managed to get in five good reps before his arms began to shake and Steve put his hands under the bar until he could set it back on the pegs.

“Not bad,” Steve said.

“Sure,” Bruce panted.

Steve made him do two more sets, giving him a few minutes to rest between each one.  As he pushed through the burn in his shoulders and arms, he tried to distract himself by thinking about his latest experiments.  He had set up a few long-term RG-27 exposures on his own gamma-irradiated cells, and he was measuring the residual effects over time.  So far, the RG-27 seemed to have a two-hour half-life.  If he was correct, even the longest-exposed cells shouldn’t show any effects at all when he checked them today. 

That conclusion was both comforting and disturbing.

Bruce struggled to straighten his arms on one last rep, nearly dropping the bar on his chest, but Steve’s hands were there hovering just above the bar.

“Come on, Bruce.  You can do it.”

Bruce took a deep breath and closed his eyes, reached down inside himself, and _pushed_ for all he was worth.

The bar suddenly felt light as air, and he was so shocked that he let go.  His eyes opened to see the bar sailing up, up in the air, and he was certain that it was going to come crashing down on him, so he curled up tight on the bench and threw his arms over his head.

But the impact never came and instead of the clank of metal on concrete, all he heard was Steve’s bright, boyish laughter.  He cautiously opened his eyes and uncurled, and as he did, he saw a tinge of green fading from his hands and forearms.  Steve was standing above him still, holding the bar with a huge grin on his face.

“That will never stop being amazing.”

“Did I just throw the weights at you?” Bruce asked as he sat up.

Steve pushed him to get up.  “Well, not _at_ me, not really.”  Steve loaded up the bar with more weight, a couple of the special Tony-made 500-pound plates on each side.  “But in my general direction.  You know, we really got to work on getting you do to that on purpose.”

Bruce looked at the weight in dismay. Surely Steve didn’t expect him to…

“Spot me,” Steve said, laying down on the bench.  “My turn.”

A sigh of relief escaped from Bruce.  But then he took another look at the sheer amount of weight on the bar… “Steve, I don’t think I’m much use as a spotter.”

Steve grunted as he lifted the bar.  “I’m pretty sure that if I’m in trouble, you’ll figure something out.”

****

The readings were all negative.  All of them.  As negative as his control.

Well, fuck.

Bruce stripped off his gloves—yes, he had learned his lesson—and threw them into the bin.  Well, there went that hypothesis.

He would give it a few more days.  Maybe there were latent effects that would manifest over time.  Or maybe it needed a stressor to express.

But, for now, he shoved the petri dishes back in the incubator.

****

Bruce trudged his way to the elevator.  It was late, well, later than he expected, and he was tired.  After the failure of his first experiments, he decided to go ahead and repeat it, just in case it was due to some error of his own. 

Which, the way he was going, was pretty damn likely.

But that meant mixing up a whole new batch of RG-27 from scratch and drawing more blood for fresh samples.  He hated drawing his own blood.  Needles didn’t bother him, and the sting wasn’t bad at all.  It just felt morally repugnant, as if he was going against some strange taboo.

It felt like he was working with poison, which was strange considering that he was a nuclear physicist.  He had been messing around with toxic substances for years without worrying about it at all.   Of course, that was before the Other Guy.

The physical strain of the early morning strength training with Steve and the emotional strain of his experiments left him feeling exhausted.  He wanted nothing more than to try to eat a few bites of whatever he had on hand and go to bed.

“Doctor Banner,” JARVIS’s voice echoed in the elevator.

“What, JARVIS?”

“Mr. Stark and Captain Rogers have requested your presence in the common lounge.  They say it is movie night.”

“Since when do we have a movie night?”

“Since about five minutes ago, apparently.  Shall I make your excuses?”

Bruce considered.  If he didn’t show up, either Tony or Steve were going to come down to his apartment to check up on him.  Those two didn’t seem to agree on anything except for the idea that he needed constant companionship.

“No,” Bruce said.  “I’ll go.”

The elevator came to a smooth stop and changed directions.

“Very good, Doctor Banner.”

Bruce grunted in reply.

****

Everyone was waiting for him in the lounge.  Clint had commandeered one large armchair, sitting sideways with his head on one armrest and his knees bent over the other like a contortionist.  Steve was sitting on the couch direction in front of the TV with Natasha at the other end.  They were sitting casually, not touching, each on their own respective cushion, but Steve blushed a little when he caught his eye.  And Tony was on the other couch, feet up on the coffee table and a large purple pillow on the seat beside him.

“Hey, saved you a spot,” Tony said, kicking the pillow to the floor. 

At first, Bruce paused.  He wondered if the pillow on the floor was meant for him, if Tony wanted him to kneel at his side in front of the rest of the team…but then Tony patted the seat next to him, and Bruce let out the breath he was holding.

“You ok?” Tony whispered as he plopped down.

“Yeah.  Just tired,” Bruce said.

“Hungry?” Tony asked, waving his hand at the expanse of junk food on the coffee table.  There were cans of soda, bags of salty chips, and half a cheese pizza, but one look at the food made Bruce’s stomach turn.

“Uh, no thanks,” he said.

“Movie time!” Clint announced. 

The lights dimmed and the entire wall lit up as the first frames of the movie rolled.

“What’s this?” Bruce whispered to Tony.

“Avatar.  The animation is going to blow Steve’s mind.”

Though he’d heard of it, Bruce hadn’t watched Avatar before, and certainly not on Tony’s holographic screens.  The movie was, he admitted, a work of art.  But despite the booming sound and the immersive graphics, his eyes started to feel heavy and droop only a few minutes into the film.  Tony fished the pillow from the floor and put it on his lap, then gently pulled Bruce down.  Bruce acquiesced, too tired to do much of anything but tuck his feet up onto the couch.  He tried to stay awake, but he managed to only drift between sleeping and waking.  Every now and again, a loud explosion would pull him toward consciousness, but then Tony’s hand was on his head, soothing him back down with a gentle touch.

He was vaguely aware of Clint getting up to leave the room and go towards the open kitchen.  But then there was nothing until a long, low beep pierced through his consciousness.

Bruce knew that beep.  It was the signal that the…the…machine was about to start again.  No, no, not here!  Bruce screamed, but it came out broken and strangled as the restraints pulled at his shoulders.  He bucked hard and managed to throw them off this time, but he fell off the metal table and landed hard on his hands and knees on the floor.

Then _they_ were on top of him, holding him down, and all he could do was curl up tight and scream and scream.  The Other Guy raged to life inside him, clawing his way out.

But then a low, rough voice cut through the fog in his mind.

“Bruce!  It’s ok.  Everything ‘s ok!”

It was Tony!  And Bruce realized that he wasn’t in that room any more, he was at home, in Tony’s Tower, but the rage inside him was too far gone.  He couldn’t control it.  He couldn’t fight it.  His muscles and bones broke and shifted and tried to reform under his skin.  He grit his teeth until they felt they would break, trying to force it down.

But Tony just held him tighter.  “It’s ok, Bruce.  I know it hurts.  Just let go.”

Wha—What?

“Let go, Bruce,” Tony whispered in his ear.  “You’re safe here.  If you can’t let go here, when you’re with friends, then when can you?”

“Go away!” Bruce roared. 

“I’m not going anywhere.  It’s ok.  I’ll take care of you.”

“He’ll kill you!”

Tony laughed.  “No, you won’t.  You love me.  You know it’ll be easier if you let it happen.  Just. Let. Go.”

The pain was too much.  He couldn’t fight it anymore.  He blacked out.

****

Hulk roared as he exploded free from his restrictive shell, shreds of fabric fluttering down around him.  He was inside a room.  A large room.  With puny humans everywhere.

One was at the entrance of the room, a bag of fluffy white things lying forgotten at his feet.

The red-haired one that he chased down the hallway was behind the couch, with the big blond one holding a cushion like a shield in front of him.  Hulk roared at them.

They didn’t run.  Or shout. Or throw or shoot things at him.

“Hey, Big Guy!”

Hulk turned, breathing great plumes of air that made the shiny paper wrappers on the table fluttered.  There was Tony, lying on the floor.

Tony.  He knew Tony.  He roared a greeting.

Tony giggled, high-pitched and near hysterical.  “It’s movie night,” he said.  “Glad you could make it.”

Hulk was confused.  Why was he glad to see Hulk?

“Tony…” the man in the entrance said in a low, warning voice.

“Come on in, Clint,” Tony said.  He stood up and beckoned.  “Here, Big Guy, have some popcorn.”

Clint came in cautiously, slowly, making big, deliberate movements as if he didn’t want to scare Hulk.  As if anything scared Hulk.  He picked up the bag on the ground and shook it.  Hulk sniffed the air.  It smelled warm and good, and it made his stomach hurt.

Tony snatched the bag from Clint and held it out.  He saw that Hulk’s hand was too big to fit inside the bag, so he reached his own puny hand into it and took out a handful of tiny fluffy white things.

“Here,” Tony urged.  “Try it.”

Hulk held out his hand and Tony put the white things in it.  He ate it.  They were crunchy and salty and melted in his mouth all the same time.

“Good!” Hulk roared.

Tony winced.  “Uh, how about your inside voice, ok Big Guy.  Quieter.  You’re scaring the boss.”

Tony jerked his thumb at the man holding the pillow-shield, but now the pillow was down at his side, and his eyes were opened wide in surprise.

“Uh, hi,” he said when he saw Hulk looking at him.  “Remember me?”

“Cap,” Hulk said in triumph.  He tried to force his snarl into a smile.

Cap startled.  “Yeah.  But…uh…how about Steve?”

“Steeeeve.”

Steve laughed.  It sounded maybe like a whimper to Hulk’s big ears, but he guessed it was a laugh because he was showing his teeth, too.  Hulk showed his teeth right back.

Tony was moving again.  Tony moved a lot. 

“Hey, Clint, get the table.  Let’s make room for the Big Guy.”

Hulk could have moved the table all by himself, but he watched in curiosity as each of the puny humans grabbed an end of the low table and moved it into a corner.  As they worked, the red-haired person crept around the other end of the couch.  Hulk grunted at her and she froze.

Steve grabbed her arm and pulled her in close.  “Natasha,” he said.

“’Tasha,” Hulk repeated.  He sniffed the air.  He could smell her fear.  “’Tasha scared.”

“Yeah, you bet,” Tony said.  “Congratulations, you proved she’s human after all.  I didn’t think it was possible.  And you know what you win for that?  You get to pick the next movie!”

Hulk squinted at Tony.  “Movie?”

“Yeah.  You know, just fuck it.  JARVIS put on Toy Story.  The first one, not the third one.”

Tony pulled all the extra couch cushions off the couches and piled them on the floor.  “Here, Big Guy. This should do ya.”

Hulk sat down.  It was soft.

Then the whole wall lit up in a shifting mosaic of bright colors.  It was beautiful.  Hulk had never seen anything like it before.

Tony sat down on the floor next to him with the bag of fluffy white things in his hands.  He took Hulk’s hands and poured out as much as he could hold.  It turned out he could hold almost the entire bag.

“Hey!” Clint said.  “I made it!”

“Go make some more,” Tony hissed.  “And use the stove this time.”

Clint scratched his head.  “How do I even…”

Steve sighed.  “I’ll show you,” he said.

But Hulk didn’t pay much attention to them.  He was entranced by the colors and the figures on the wall.  They were almost as big as he was.  They weren’t real, he knew that much.  He wasn’t stupid.

It was a story.  Hulk remembered stories from _before_ , but he didn’t remember them being so bright and funny.  And the music was nice.  The way that Tony curled up next to him and put his hand on his leg was nice, too. 

It wasn’t until quite a long time later that a thought occurred to Hulk.

He turned to Tony.  “No smashing?”

Tony’s eyebrows drew together in thought.  “Do you feel like smashing?”

Hulk thought about it.  No, not really.  He shook his head.

Tony shrugged.  “Next time,” he said as he turned back toward the movie.

****

Bruce was aware of voices first.

“He’s ok.  He’s ok!  Here, give him to me.”

It was Tony’s voice.  Then, he was being lifted up into strange arms, and he whimpered in protest.

“Shh.”  Steve.

Bruce forced his eyes open just as he was lowered onto the couch, his head cradled on a pillow in Tony’s lap.  Tony wrapped his arms around him, and it felt good and warm against his cold skin.  Then there was a blanket draped over him and tucked around his bare feet.

“What happened?” Bruce croaked.  “Did I hurt anyone?”

“No,” Steve said from somewhere above him.

“Yeah, but you demolished like five bowls of popcorn,” Clint laughed from across the room.

“What?”

“The Big Guy watched a movie with us.  How could we _not_ serve popcorn?” Tony said. 

“He watched a movie…?”

“Yeah.  The whole thing.  He only fell asleep and changed back to you during the credits.”

That just didn’t make sense to Bruce…not only did the Other Guy not cause mass destruction, but he actually _waited_ to transform back.  That meant that Bruce wasn’t the only one with some semblance of control…his head reeled just thinking about it.

And he ate popcorn…

…popcorn…

“It was the beep,” Bruce said.  His voice was slurring with sleep.  “The microwave beep…it was like the…the…”

“Shh!” It was Tony shushing him this time, stroking his hair.  “It doesn’t matter, Bruce.  You’re safe.  We’re safe.  Everything’s ok.”

Bruce took one good look around.  The walls and furniture were all where they were supposed to be.  And, yes, all four of his friends were whole and accounted for.  Exhausted and relieved, he let himself be pulled back down into sleep.

The last thing he heard was Tony’s voice.  “Well, movie night was a success.  I think we should make this a _thing_ from now on.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read and comment! I hope you know how much you are appreciated!


	8. These Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waking up after an incident is never easy.

Before I get into the latest chapter of this story, I am so incredibly happy to announce the arrival of a long labor of love! Nonymos and I have ventured into the world of crossovers!

Our story, [Dimensions of Trust](../../1129267), combines this 'verse with [The Unspoken Truth](../../../series/61096) 'verse, and will (probably) be the third installment of this story line.

And, if you haven't read Nonymos's stories, I very highly recommend them. They're works of art. Sexy, sexy art.

 

****

The late morning sunlight streamed through the picture windows and across Bruce’s face.  He could feel it, warm and bright against his closed eyelids.  He knew immediately that he wasn’t in his own bed—or even Tony’s bed—but he also sensed that he was somewhere safe and familiar, and that was enough to make him think it was alright to open his eyes.

He was on the couch in the Avengers’ common lounge.  Someone had put a soft down pillow under his aching head and covered him with a fleece blanket the color of Steve’s uniform.  Bruce groaned as he sat up, pulling the blanket up with him because he was pretty sure he wasn’t wearing any pants.

“Good morning, Sunshine,” Tony said from somewhere behind the couch.

Bruce turned to see Tony sitting at the breakfast bar of the open kitchen.  He had a screwdriver clamped in his teeth, and the pieces of a disemboweled microwave were strewn across the counter.  Steve was in the kitchen, too, flipping eggs in a skillet as he watched Tony work.

“What happened?” Bruce asked.  “What did the microwave do to you?”

Tony took the screwdriver out of his mouth so he could talk.  “It’s more like what the microwave did to _you_.”

“Oh.  _Oh!_ ” Bruce said.  Bits and pieces of memory came back to him.  The movie.  Clint making popcorn.  Tony’s arms around him as he fell to the floor.

“But it’s ok,” Tony said.  “We’re teaching the microwave to use its words like a big bot, aren’t we?  No more of this immature beeping nonsense.”

“Yes,” the partly-disassembled microwave said in a strangely high-pitched robotic voice.

Tony turned something with the screwdriver.  “Try that again.”

“Yes,” the microwave repeated in a lower, less shrill register.

Steve shook his head and slid the eggs onto a plate before cracking a couple more into the pan.

“How do you want your eggs, Bruce?” Steve asked.

Bruce’s stomach rumbled at the thought of food, but his head pounded and he felt too nervous and uneasy to answer.  All he really wanted to do was hide under the blanket and go back to sleep. 

“No thanks,” he said.

“Ok.  Scrambled it is.”

It wasn’t worth it to argue.  Tony glanced up at him then, and something he saw made him blink and put down the screwdriver.  He got up and stretched as if he had been sitting at the counter for quite a while, then sauntered over to the couch to flop down next to Bruce. 

To his credit, Tony didn’t say anything.  He just put his arm across the back of the couch, creating a space for Bruce to hide.  Then he just waited.

Bruce knew he was being stupid.  There was no reason to feel embarrassed.  Well, he did transform into a nine-foot green monster and then wake up naked in the living room, but really, that wasn’t so abnormal for him anymore.  His chest tightened and his sinuses burned with the onset of tears.  Just great. Now he was going to cry about it, too.

So he folded himself against Tony’s chest and buried his face into the hollow of his shoulder.  Tony’s shirt was well-worn and soft against his cheek, and he smelled warm and metallic.  Tony’s arm slid down off the back of the couch and against Bruce’s back.  He pulled up the blanket to cover his shoulders and just held it there.

The tears didn’t come, abated by the pressure of Tony’s hand against his back and the smell of coconut in his nose.   They stayed like that for a long while, even after Steve placed a plate of food on the couch beside them.  Eventually, Tony shifted a bit to reach for the plate, and Bruce heard him rip apart a piece of toast and start munching on it.  Bruce still didn’t feel like eating, but his growling stomach betrayed him.

“You’ll hurt Steve’s feelings if you don’t eat,” Tony wheedled. 

Bruce sighed against Tony’s shoulder before pushing himself up and away.  “Ok,” he said.

“Good boy,” Tony said, and though his voice was warm and genuine, Bruce felt himself blush furiously because Steve was _right there in the kitchen_ and there was no way that he didn’t hear that.

But a quick look at Steve, eating his own breakfast while poking at the microwave parts, showed that he didn’t seem much concerned with what was going on at the couch.

He turned back to Tony to see him offering up a bit of toast.  Steve wasn’t watching, so Bruce leaned in and carefully ate it from Tony’s hand.

Tony bit his lip to keep from saying anything and his eyes went wide as he, too, glanced over at Steve.  Then he pushed Bruce down so he was hidden by the back of the couch with his head in Tony’s lap and proceeded to hand-feed him the rest of breakfast. 

This, Bruce could handle.  He felt his insecurity melt away at the fond look in Tony’s eyes whenever he took a piece of food from his hands.  His nerves smoothed out and the knots in his stomach relaxed enough to let him eat without feeling like he was going to be sick. 

When the plate was empty, Steve came over to trade it for a bowl of fruit.  He leaned over the back of the couch to set the bowl next to Tony’s hand, and there was no way he didn’t see Bruce sprawled out in Tony’s lap.

And then he _winked_ at Bruce.  And Tony laughed.

“Yeah, real sly there, Steve,” Tony teased.  “You want a real show sometime?”

It was Steve’s turn to blush and stammer.  “I was just…I…look, are you done with the plate or not?”

****

After he ate enough to satisfy Tony and Steve, Bruce was brought to Tony’s bedroom and tucked in.  Surprisingly, he wasn’t as physically exhausted as he usually was after an incident, but Tony did point out that all the Other Guy did was watch a movie and eat popcorn.  But he was still emotionally drained and falling asleep somewhere familiar was a luxury he wouldn’t take for granted.

Tony sat on the edge of the king-sized bed with Bruce curled around him, chest pressed to Tony’s back.  Tony rubbed Bruce’s back with slow, firm strokes.

“I’ll stay with you, if you want.”

“No,” Bruce said, “I think I’m going to be asleep for a few hours.  I just need to be left alone for a while.”

“Do you want to talk about it?  I’m not so good at the whole…talking…thing.  But I can listen.  I’m really good at shutting the fuck up when I have to.”

That made Bruce smile because none of it was true.

“No, it’s ok.  You don’t have to.”

“I know.  I don’t _have to_ do anything.  And I never do what I _have to_ do anyway.  This is different.”  Then, quieter, he added, “You were going to tell me something, and I didn’t let you.  Everyone was there, and you were pretty out of it, and I wasn’t sure if you knew what you were saying.”

There was nothing but the sound of their breathing for a few long seconds.  “I don’t remember what it was.”

Tony exhaled hard.  Bruce knew he was trying to decide whether or not to push the subject.  He was relieved when Tony just bent down and pressed a firm kiss to his temple.

“When you’re ready,” Tony said.  He kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the bed next to Bruce.  “I’ll stay just for a little while.  Until you fall asleep.”

Bruce was grateful, and sleep came quickly with Tony’s solid presence beside him.

****

He dreamed of the Hulk.  Building collapsed in clouds of concrete dust as he ripped through them.  Helicopters circled overhead, but they were no match for the Hulk’s strength as he tore them from the sky.  Tanks flung fireballs at him, but he batted them away like mosquitos.

At the end, he was left in a crater of blood-stained asphalt and smoking rubble, stumbling awake from his dream-within-a-dream. 

He was naked, not even a shred of cloth left to preserve his dignity.  The air was cold with the onset of winter, and the clouds above threatened freezing rain.  The landscape was painted in shades of smoky grey.  He stumbled to his feet.

“Tony?” he called.  “Steve?”

No one answered.  He called for Clint and Natasha, and maybe even Betty, but it didn’t matter.

He was the only one left on the planet.  Maybe he had killed them all.

So he walked, peering into shattered store fronts for some sign of human life.  Shards of glass covered the sidewalks, and he left a trail of bloody footprints behind him.  He knew it should hurt, but he didn’t feel any pain.

Eventually, he sat on the curb.  He remembered lessons about being lost from when he was a child.  Stay in one place.  Let someone find you.  So he buried his face in his hands and waited.

Later—a second, an hour, he couldn’t tell—the crunch of boots on gravel made him look up.  There, in front of him, was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen.  Her eyes sparkled like gems, and she seemed to float above the street rather than walk.  Long, white-blond hair flowed down her shoulders, tipped in pink like the color of his mother’s lipstick.

“Hello, Bruce,” she said as she approached.

Bruce sprang to his feet.  “I don’t know you,” he said warily.

“Sure you do,” she said.  “I know _you._   And you can’t make up anyone in a dream whom you haven’t seen in real life.”

Ah, ok, that made more sense.  “I’m dreaming, then?”

“Are you?”

Bruce took another look around at his surroundings.  He wasn’t quite sure.  But then he saw his bloody feet and he knew.

“Yes,” he said.  She smiled at him, a glow seemed to emanate from her.  “But who are you?”

“I’m your guardian angel.”

Bruce laughed.  “You’re a little late, don’t you think?”

“Am I?”  She stepped closer, and the glow subsided.  She looked like nothing more strange than a beautiful young woman in flowing robes with hair like sunshine on her shoulders.

“Yeah.  A few years, actually.”

“Why do you say that?” She seemed genuinely confused.

“If you’re some guardian angel, then where were you when I was being tortured in Ross’s labs?”

She just smiled sadly.

“How about when I was on the run from the military?”  His voice rose.  “Or when I was messing around with that gamma radiation?  Where the fuck were you when my father came home drunk?  When he killed my mom?”

He was screaming now, spitting the words out with venom.  But it didn’t touch her sad smile.

 “I know you’re hurting,” she said softly.  “I know you’ve been strong for so long.  But you don’t have to be anymore.  I’m here now.”

She came closer, but Bruce stepped back.  If she came any closer, he was going to punch her, and…well…angel or not, that just wasn’t right.

“Just get the hell away from me!” he shouted.

She stopped.  “I can’t do that, Bruce.  Now that I’ve seen what you’ve been through, I know how I can help you.  Just let me help you, Bruce.  I’ll make everything ok.  You’ll see.  Everything will be so much better.”

She took another step towards him, and something in Bruce snapped.  He reached down and his hands found a piece of broken concrete at his feet.  He picked it up with a strength he forgot he possessed and hurled it at the woman’s head and screamed.

He was still screaming when he woke up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! And remember to check out Dimensions of Trust and Nonymos's stories while you're waiting for the next chapter of this one!


	9. All In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A game of poker. Some win, some lose.

Bruce woke alone in Tony’s bedroom.  A triangle of light spilled in through the open doorway, but the room was dark. His heart raced, and he could feel the sweat dripping down between his shoulder blades, but the room was cool and quiet and awareness returned quickly.

A shadow fell across the doorway and Bruce looked up to see Tony with his hands on the door jamb.

“Bruce?”

Bruce sat up.  The shadow grew as Tony approached to sit on the bed.

“Yeah, I’m awake.”

“JARVIS said you were having a nightmare.”

Bruce scratched a hand through his hair.  “Not so much a nightmare.  Just a really strange dream.”  When he blinked, he saw the silhouette of a pink-haired woman.

Tony nodded.  “Feel like getting up, or are you still tired?  The guys are in the other room playing poker.”

There was whiskey on Tony’s breath, but it smelled warm and real.  And he really didn’t want to be alone.

“Ok,” Bruce said.

“Yeah?” Tony sounded surprised.  

But he sprang up to round up something for Bruce to wear before he could change his mind.  Bruce stretched and flipped back the warm covers, and the slight chill in the air woke him up even more. 

“How long did I sleep?”

“All day,” Tony said.  He returned to the bed with a pair well-worn black cargo pants and an old CBGB t-shirt.  “I came to get you for dinner, but you were out like a light, so I thought it would be better to let you wake up in your own time.  But we saved you something to eat, if you’re hungry.”

He was ravenous. “I could eat,” he said.

The shirt was thin and soft with wear, and the pants had holes where the belt loops had been ripped off.  But they were comfortable in all the right places.

They didn’t have to go far because the poker game was spread out in Tony’s living room, along with half of his bar.  Bruce paused and Tony looked at him askance.

“Hey,” Tony said softly, “If you don’t want…”

“I do,” Bruce reassured him.  “It’s fine.”  Anyway, he had already been spotted.

“Bruce!” Clint called out across the room.  “You owe me some popcorn.”

“Tell that to the Other Guy next time you see him,” he replied with a lopsided grin.

Steve scooted closer to Natasha on the couch so that Bruce had enough room to sit and he flopped gracelessly down.   Natasha raised an eyebrow and neatly moved her glass of scotch to her other side. 

“Deal you in?” Clint asked as he shuffled the cards one-handed.

“Not this hand,” Bruce said.  “Let me wake up a little more first.”

“Tony?” Clint called over to the kitchen.  “Hurry up!  You’re not done losing your fortune to me!”

Tony came back to the living room with a plate of food and put it on Bruce’s lap before he took his vacant seat.  “We could go all night and you wouldn’t even touch the trust fund,” he said.

Clint dealt the cards, but Bruce was too preoccupied with his plate to follow the game.  A mountain of whole-wheat pasta was doused in marinara and piled high with grilled zucchini, broccoli, artichoke and mushroom.  Two pieces of garlic bread sat on one side of the plate, the edges already soaking up the tomato sauce.

“Good?” Tony asked.  “Steve made it.”

“I’ve died and gone to carbohydrate heaven,” Bruce said around a huge bite.  He swallowed.  “Thanks, Steve.”

Steve smiled at him.  “You’re welcome.  There’s a whole extra pot, so eat up.”

The combination of the warm food and Steve’s body heat chased the last of the nightmare’s chill from Bruce’s bones, and he was felt relaxed and sated by the time he mopped up the last of the sauce with the bread.  He started to rise to put the dish in the kitchen, but Tony stood and stretched out his hand for it. 

“More?” Tony asked as he took the plate.

Bruce paused.  “No, thanks,” he answered after a moment.  But it seemed like he took too long to answer because Tony gave him a _look_ before going to the kitchen.

Clint, Steve, and Natasha all watched Tony leave.

“That’s a first,” Natasha said.  She reached beneath the coffee table and came up with a bottle of scotch to refill her glass.

Bruce looked at her quizzically for a second before it occurred to him what had just happened.

“It’s not the first time,” Bruce assured her.

Clint shuffled the deck a few times.  “Think it’s just Bruce?” he asked no one in particular.

Steve threw a chip on the table.  “I’ll take that bet.  I don’t think he’d do it for anyone else here.”

“No one _here_?” Natasha echoed.  “Who else are you thinking?”

“Rhodes.  I bet he’d take things from Rhodes.”

“Really?” Bruce asked.  He could feel himself starting to blush.  “Is this the most interesting thing that’s happened all night?”

“Yeah,” all three answered.

“He’s coming back,” Steve said.  He could probably hear him.

“Ok, quick,” Clint said, tossing his own chip alongside Steve’s.  “I bet he’d take something from Captain America, too.  But not from Nat.”

She agreed.  “No, probably not.  If he knows what’s good for him.”

Bruce kind of wanted to laugh, but thought better of it.

Tony walked back into the room, carrying a plate of vegetables and another one of dip.  They all tried not to watch him too closely as he set them down and took his seat again, but Clint looked pointedly at Steve.

“Uh…” Steve glanced around before his eyes settled on Tony’s empty glass.  “Anyone want a beer?”  He made his way over to the bar.  “Clint?  Tony?”

“Sure,” they both said.

“Natasha?”

She held up her full glass in reply.

Bruce grabbed a plump cherry tomato from the plate and sat back to watch the show.  Steve fished three bottles of beer out of the bar’s fridge and popped the caps off before carrying them back by the necks.  He handed Clint one first before offering the next to Tony.

Bruce could practically hear them hold their collective breath.

Tony raised an eyebrow.  “Thanks, Steve.  Just put it on the table.”

“Fuck!” Clint swore into his bottle and Natasha took a drink to hide her smile.

****

Several hands later, Bruce swore the game turned into try-to-hand-Tony-something.  Even Tony started to notice.

“What the hell, guys?  Who elected this National Fuck-With-Tony Night?”  He pointed a carrot stick at Steve.  “Look, just because you wear the spangly pants doesn’t mean you get to decide that kind of shit.”

Clint held up his hands in mock surrender.  “Hey, we’re just…how would Bruce say it?  Testing a hypothesis.”

“Leave me out of it,” Bruce said.

“Hypothesis my ass.  What hypothesis?”

“You won’t take anything that’s handed to you, unless it’s Bruce,” Natasha said with a brief shrug. 

“Hey,” Tony said to her, “you had your chance.  Then you _stuck a needle in my neck_.”

She just smiled at him.

“The point stands,” Steve said.

Tony huffed and took a swig from his nearly-empty beer.  “Well,” he said. “I know where Bruce’s hands have been.  Down my pants.  Where they belong.”

“Jesus, Tony!” Bruce said, but it was drowned out by Clint’s guffaws.  He wanted to crawl between the couch cushions and hide.

“So who won?  There must have been a bet.  You guys are acting like there’s money at stake here.”

“Steve won twenty bucks,” Natasha said.

“Twenty…dollars?  I’m insulted.  Twenty measly dollars on my _integrity?_ ”

“On your superstitions and paranoia,” Clint clarified.

“My therapist says it’s worth a lot more than that.”

“Therapist?  What therapist?

“Bruce.  And JARVIS.”

Tony was laughing now, and he looked at Bruce with shining, dancing eyes until Bruce couldn’t help but smile back.

Another round of drinks was downed before they could convince Bruce to join in the game.  Steve was almost out, the pile of bright plastic in front of him dwindling to nothing, but he seemed more interested in Natasha pressed up against him than keeping his chips.   Natasha looked as relaxed as he had ever seen her, and when Steve looked at her, all the seriousness melted from his face and Bruce could see how very young he really was.

Tony and Clint had most of the team’s wealth split between them, but as the empty bottles multiplied, it became obvious that their strategy was to drink the other into submission.  Bruce should have minded, but he was too distracted by the crinkles that appeared at the corners of Tony’s eyes whenever he laughed.

“Your bet, Doc.”

Bruce glanced at his hand.  He had nothing.  Ten high.  He folded.

Clint smirked.  “Come on, Doc.  You could at least try to bluff.”

“Against a certified card-counting genius and a carnie?   I’m not that dumb.”

“Ex-carnie, thank you very much,” Clint said as he sloshed his beer.  “And you don’t count cards in poker.”

“Maybe _you_ don’t,” Tony cut in with a sly grin.

“Well you’re not doing it very well then,” Clint replied, gesturing to the stacks of chips in front of him. 

Steve went out in the next round, leaving Tony and Clint to eye each other across the coffee table.

“Let’s make this interesting,” Tony said.

“Oh no,” Natasha muttered.  She threw her cards down. 

“How interesting is ‘interesting’?”

“What the most you’ve ever bet?” Tony asked.

“At cards?”

“At anything.  And your life doesn’t count.  I’ve seen you jump off buildings with nothing but dental floss to catch you.”

Clint whistled through his teeth.  “Natasha,” he said after a long pause.  “I lost Natasha to an arms dealer once.”

“No, _they_ lost,” Natasha said with a wicked smile.  “In the long run.”

Steve leaned back against the couch and stretched his long arm across the back.  Natasha cradled her drink and sat back so that his arm was lying across her shoulders.   It suddenly occurred to Bruce that having the “safe sex” talk with Steve was going to take on an entirely new meaning. 

Plastic clinked as another handful of chips was tossed on the table.

“What about you, Tony?”

“I redefined the maximum bet at the Cesar’s Palace roulette table.”

Bruce winced.  “That’s the worst odds in the place.”

“I know,” Tony said with a bright smile.  “I didn’t say I won.”

Natasha sighed.  “Ok, now that we’ve established that you’re both big losers, what’ll it be?”

Tony looked at Clint with one rakish eyebrow raised.  “You first.  What do you want?  A car?  The plane? A private island in the South Pacific?”

“Your quinjet,” Clint said. 

“A respectable request,” Tony said.  “Ok.  But I get your bow.”

Steve sucked in a breath and Clint’s eyes narrowed.

But Bruce knew Tony was bluffing.  He wouldn’t take Clint’s bow in a game of cards.  He was betting against himself.

“Deal.  All in?”

The towers of plastic chips toppled over each other as Tony shoved them toward the center.

Clint had a full house, tens over threes.

Tony laid his cards down.  He had nothing.  Nothing at all.

Clint whooped.  “Have her waxed for me, yeah?”

“Yeah, sure,” Tony said.  “I’ll have the valet bring her around front.”

It was late.  The game was over.  Steve began sorting the chips and putting them back in their box while Natasha stretched. 

“Good night, boys,” she said.  “We should do this again sometime.”

Bruce took the chips out of Steve’s hands nodded to Natasha.  Steve smiled at him and mouthed a quick “thanks.”

“Hey, I’ll walk you to your…uh…room,” Steve said as he followed her to the elevator.

Tony stumbled a little as he stood. “Fucking carnie,” he said to Clint, but he was smiling as he shook his hand and wrapped a loose arm around him.

Bruce shook his head at them as he gathered up an armload of empty bottles. 

“Hey, Brucie, don’t mind that.  We’ll clean up in the morning.  I’m ready for bed.”

“Ok, Tony,” Bruce said.  “Just give me a minute and I’ll be right there.”

Tony disappeared into the bedroom.  It only took a few minutes to put away the snacks and shove all the recycling into a bag.  The poker chips went back into their cupboard and the chairs and cushions were put where they belonged.

The lights in the bedroom were turned down low and Jeff Buckley’s sad, hopeful voice filtered in through the speakers.  Bruce recognized the album.  It was one of his favorites.

Tony had managed to get to the bed, but he was already asleep sprawled on the bed.  “Tony?” Bruce called softly, but he didn’t respond.  So he had lost the drinking contest, too, Bruce mused.  He worried for just a second for Clint, but he figured JARVIS would have told him if he had passed out in the elevator or something.

Bruce sat on the bed for a second, watching Tony’s face relaxed in sleep as he breathed in deep almos-snores.  Then, gently, Bruce took off his shoes and socks.  He unbuttoned his pants, next, but when he looked up, Tony’s eyes were watching him.

“Taking advantage of a drunk man, Brucie?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Bruce responded.  He slid Tony’s pants off one leg at a time.

“That’s a crying shame,” Tony said with a slow, sloppy smile.  It faded quickly.  “I _am_ drunk.  You don’t have to stay, Brucie.  If you don’t want to.”

Bruce climbed up onto the bed so he was straddling Tony’s body.  “It’s ok.  I want to stay.”

The album skipped to the seventh track.

“Thanks, Snowflake,” Tony said.  The name sounded fragile coming from Tony’s numb lips.

Slowly, Bruce bent down and kissed him.  Dry lips parted beneath his in a sigh, so he ventured deeper, holding himself over Tony’s body on his forearms.  He tasted like the bitter remnants of beer and the sharper tang of scotch. 

Tony was breathless when Bruce pulled up, and the words “I love you,” came out in a quick, panted breath.

“That’s the dumbest bet you’ve made all night,” Bruce said, but he kissed him again.

“I love you so much that it scares me,” Tony said, breathlessly once more.

“Ah.”  Bruce laid down so his head rested in the hollow of Tony’s shoulder, right next the arc reactor’s hum.  “That’s more like it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all of your thoughtful comments! I love to hear from you!


	10. Self-Medication

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce can't sleep, so he's trying the Stark Cure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, this is not a good idea. I'm not pretending it is. BUT Bruce is a grown-ass man. And, really, if you're taking advice on how to deal with trauma from Bruce Banner and Tony Stark...well, I hope you have a top-notch lab and good fire insurance.

The watery light of the arc reactor cast strange shadows across the room.  If Bruce stared too long, they would shift and morph into familiar figures.  Cap and his shield.  Natasha’s hair.  A drawn bow.  They rose and fell with Tony’s deep, even breaths. 

Sleep eluded him, but he was content to lie there with his head on Tony’s chest, tracing the figures of his imagination.  He had tried to sleep, but every time he closed his eyes, there was a woman with pink and blonde hair waiting for him.

_”I’m your guardian angel.”_

_“Let me help you.”_

When he remembered the half-lucid words, anger bubbled up inside him.  He was too drained and tired for it to pose much of a threat, but it was there.  After all, why would he need saving _now_? 

He knew why.  Of course he knew why.  Because, in the quiet of the night, he still shivered when Tony touched him.  Because when he had kissed Tony, he felt…nothing.  Sure, he felt Tony’s yielding lips, his slick tongue, could smell beer and whiskey and coconut, but all those sensations where external.  It didn’t touch him inside.  Not like it used to.

And, maybe, it never would again.

Suddenly, Tony’s breathing was too loud and the sound of his heart beneath Bruce’s cheek was like a hummingbird, too fragile and beautiful for his weight.  Carefully, he pushed himself up on his elbows and sat up.  Tony stirred and turned onto his side, as if he had been waiting for Bruce to stop pinning him down, but he didn’t wake.

Bruce slipped out of bed as quietly as he could.  The air was cool without Tony’s warmth underneath him, but he didn’t bother looking for a robe before going out to the living room.

The room, so filled with light and love and laughter such a short time ago, was dark and quiet now.  He padded out to the picture window with bare feet and looked down at the city below.  The night sparkled, but the light was silent and cold.  It looked how he felt—far away, impersonal, empty.

He went back over to the couch and sat down.  As he did, his foot bumped into smooth glass underneath the low table.  He reached down and picked up a half-full bottle of scotch.  After a second, he remembered Natasha had kept it in easy reach during the card game.  He must have missed it when he was cleaning up.  He took the bottle to the bar to put it away.  The amber liquid caught the glow of the city lights and refracted it in shards of silver and copper.  He put it on the counter and stared at it for a while, then, before he could think too much about what he was doing, he took a crystal tumbler from the bar shelf, poured a bit of the liquor in, and swallowed as much as he could in one go.

The scotch burned its way down his throat and he choked on the fumes, nearly coughing it right back up.  But he swallowed it down, and, after a few seconds, the burn mellowed to a pleasant warmth that reached from the back of his throat all the way down into his stomach.

He could feel that, inside and out.  It felt like fire, and anger, and regret.  He could see why Tony liked the stuff.

Carefully this time, he took another swallow.  He was more prepared for the taste, and at least he didn’t want to throw up this time.  Still, his eyes watered with the burn and tears spilled down his face as he downed the rest of the glass.

“What the fuck, Bruce?”

Bruce spun around so fast that he nearly dropped the crystal tumbler to the floor.  Tony stood a few feet away, cross-armed, sleep-tousled and bleary-eyed.  Bruce felt shame creep down his spine.  Tony hadn’t sounded angry or disappointed, or anything like he felt about himself.  He sounded incredulous. 

Bruce put the glass down with a clumsy clink.  “I’m sorry,” he stammered.

Tony’s hands fell to his sides.  He took the few short steps to the bar and looked from the bottle to the empty glass.  He didn’t say anything as he took another tumbler from the shelf and put it by the bottle’s side.

“What are we drinking?” he asked softly.  He picked up the bottle and examined it before putting it away.  “Ok, better question.  _Why_ are we drinking?”

Bruce didn’t know how to answer that, so he went with the obvious.  “I couldn’t sleep.”

“There’s a whole medicine cabinet of Ambien if that’s your problem.  If you’re going for the liquor, there are two possible answers: either you’re drinking to remember or drinking to forget.”

“I’m not really sure.”  Tony leaned against the bar and cocked his head, waiting for an answer.  “I don’t want to remember,” Bruce finally spit out.

“Ok,” Tony said.  “Self-medication time.  Luckily for you I _am_ that kind of doctor.”

Tony went over to a larger cabinet and pulled out a dark bottle.  He turned it label-out, like a sommelier presenting a bottle of wine for inspection.  “Single-malt and older than my last two girlfriends added together.”

“And you have that just lying around.”

“Yeah.  All of the good stuff is in the wine cellar,” Tony said with a wink.  He broke the seal and poured out two glasses.  He held out one for Bruce, but didn’t let go when Bruce reached out to take it.  “Hey, Brucie, have you actually been drunk before?”

“No,” Bruce admitted.  Tony let go of the glass.  “I had a couple of beers once, in college, but I…I didn’t want to…get drunk, really.”

Tony nodded and held out his glass.  “Well, cheers, then.”

The clink of the glasses sounded too loud in the dark, but then Tony was downing his drink in one swallow while Bruce looked forlornly into his own.  Tony poured himself another.

“You don’t have to,” Tony started to say, but Bruce took a deep breath and drank.

The dark amber liquid was far different than whatever was in Natasha’s bottle.  It was strong, sure, but smooth and silky at the same time.  Or, he mused, maybe his nerves had been burned away by the first liquor.

He set the glass down and Tony refilled it.

“Come on,” Tony said, nodding towards the couch that overlooked the city view.  He picked up the bottle and set on the floor by the leg of the couch.  Bruce followed.

JARVIS turned the lights up just a little to the shade of smoky candlelight. 

“I feel like we should be listening to pretentious jazz.  I need a piano.  J, why isn’t there a piano here?”

“Because, Sir, you’ve destroyed six in the past two years.  Better not risk a grand piano ejected out of the penthouse window onto the street below.”

“Hmm,” Tony said.  “Well, next time we’re in Malibu I’ll play for you.  Or we could always take over a piano bar.  There’s one every block around here.  Better yet, let’s go the Plaza and play Sweet Caroline until they kick us out.”

The familiar voices and the warmth in his stomach chased away the lingering chill and Bruce felt a smile creep its way across his lips.

“That’s better,” Tony said as he returned the smile.  “I was kidding about Sweet Caroline, by the way.  We’ll play Hooked on a Feeling.”

Bruce took another sip from his drink and Tony topped it off.  They sat in silence for a while, the warm light behind them and the canvas of the city stretched out below.  The more he sipped on the scotch, the more he was able to appreciate the complexity of the flavor, and he let Tony refill his glass again.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Tony asked softly.

“About what?” Bruce said.

Tony shrugged.  “Whatever.  Your research.  The way Steve keeps eyeing Natasha like she’s some cheesecake pinup.  Fucking life, man.”

“My research has pretty much hit a wall,” Bruce replied.  “Don’t know what to do about that.  Keep running samples.  Hope I fucked up.  But you know what they say about repeating the same thing and expecting different results.”

“Yeah.  Insanity.  Though I’d like to think I’ve added some alternative definitions to the good ol’ Oxford English.”

Bruce smirked. “You mean like dating Dr. Jekyll behind Mr. Hyde’s back?”

“Or like implanting a cold fusion reactor in my chest and then thinking, hey, the next logical thing to do would be to use it to power a rocket suit.”

“Hmm…yeah…you’re going to need a couple pages.”

“Do I get my picture next to it, too?” Tony asked with a debonair quirk of the eyebrow.

“Oh, I thought that was what the photo shoot last week was for.”

Tony threw back his head and laughed.  “How are you feeling now?”

Bruce thought about it.  He was dizzy from the alcohol, but he was warmer.  The sadness that dogged him didn’t seem much better, but it felt farther away, like he had to reach out and touch it for it to bother him.

“Better,” he answered.  “But not ready for bed yet.” He held out his glass.  Tony hesitated a bit, but filled it.  The bottle was getting low.

Tony pulled his feet up onto Bruce’s lap and leaned against the armrest.  His hair was a mess from being slept on and he ran his hand through it.  He didn’t ask Bruce any more questions; instead, he launched into a series of misadventures involving him and Rhodey during their MIT years.  Apparently, Rhodey had double-majored in aeronautic engineering and Tony-sitting.  Well, at least he was using both degrees, Bruce mused as he absently rubbed Tony’s feet, but he failed to follow most of the story. 

Soon, the room began to tilt on its axis and Bruce closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see the room spin.

“Come on, Snowflake,” Tony’s voice woke him from his half-doze.  “Let’s go lay down.”

Bruce stood at Tony’s urging, but his feet stumbled over each other on the way to the bedroom.  All of the motion wreaked havoc on his equilibrium, and he had to put his hand on the wall to keep from falling over.

“I got you, Big Guy,” Tony reassured him but Bruce could only groan in response.

A few more steps and he fell, but there was something soft and solid beneath him before he could worry too much about gravity. 

“You’re fine,” Tony said.  He lifted Bruce’s legs onto the bed and pulled the blanket up and over him.  “Snug as a bug in a rug.  That’s how Jarvis tucked me in.”

“JARVIS?”

“Yeah, Jarvis.  The first time I got drunk on Dad’s liquor, he found me and tucked me in.”  The bed dipped as Tony crawled in on the other side.  “He didn’t even yell at me.  Well, not the first time anyway.”

But Bruce was already fast asleep.

****

When he woke, it was still dark.  And the room was still spinning like a top.

Bruce groaned as he turned over, but the sudden motion made it obvious why he had woken up.  He heaved himself out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom just in time to throw up.  Well, mostly in time, he thought as he looked down at the splattered CBGB shirt.

Bruce fell back onto his rear and leaned up against the wall.  He could feel another wave of nausea coming, so he took the opportunity to breathe.  Cold sweat dripped down his neck and across his back and chest, but his skin burned and the cold wall felt good.  He pressed his cheek against the marble.

“Bruce?” Tony called from the other room.  But Bruce was too busy retching again to answer him.

An arm wrapped around his chest from behind, lying just below his collarbone and Bruce let his head hang as he sagged against it.  Eventually, his stomach stopped revolting against him and he pushed himself back, hitting the flush clumsily on his way up.

He closed his eyes, not wanting to see Tony’s face, but he could hear the tap run.  Then there was a deliciously warm washcloth wiping his face.  The shirt was dragged off over his head and he shivered a little as the cool air hit his sweaty skin, but the warm cloth dragged over his chest and back, wiping away the sticky feeling of sweat and vomit. 

“Wake up, Brucie,” Tony said.  “You don’t want to sleep in here.”

Bruce opened his eyes.  “I’m not sure I’m done yet,” he admitted.

Tony was crouching in front of him, armed with the wet washcloth in one hand a bottle of water in the other.  “Ok,” he said.  “Drink this.  Even if you just throw it back up.  It won’t hurt anything, that’s for sure.”

Bruce took the water and obediently chugged as much as he dared.  At least it helped wash the taste out of his mouth.  In the meantime, Tony took a couple clean towels from the cupboard.  He draped one across Bruce’s bare shoulders and folded the other one in half and laid it on the floor.

“You don’t have to stay with me,” Bruce said.  “It’s my own fault.”

Tony shrugged.  “Yeah, actually, it kind of is.  But I encouraged you.”

“I’m sorry,” Bruce said.

“This is nothing.  At least you avoided the sheets.  That’s better than I usually do.”

Bruce nodded toward the toilet.  “I think I just threw up a small country’s worth of expensive liquor.”

“That’s ok.  I hope it was fun while it lasted.”

Bruce retched again, but it was mostly water.  He drank some more and the chills and sweating started to subside.  Tony seemed to sense that he was done because he got up and returned with a toothbrush loaded with toothpaste.

“You’re the best,” Bruce said.

“Aww, it’s just the partially-metabolized booze talking,” Tony said.  “Feeling better?”

Bruce spit the foam into the toilet.  He felt closer to normal now, though a sour taste lingered in the back of his throat where the toothbrush couldn’t reach.

“Yeah,” he said.  “Much better.”

He got up and rinsed the last of the toothpaste away with a handful of water while he ran the brush under the tap.  Tony snagged the little bathroom trashcan as he followed Bruce out the bathroom and put it beside the bed.

Bruce flopped down on the bed and dropped the towel on the floor as he pulled up the covers.  Tony didn’t tuck him in this time, but he did pull Bruce close to him once he was lying down. 

 “Try to sleep in,” Tony said.  “The best hangover cure is to sleep right through the damn thing.”

“I’m never drinking again,” Bruce grumbled. 

Tony gave him a light squeeze—not too hard, thankfully.  “Coming from you, Brucie, I believe it.”

****

The next morning was absolutely miserable.  But at least Bruce didn’t dream during the last few hours of sleep he managed to get.

Still, his head felt like Tony had used it for an anvil and he could feel his internal organs shriveled and pickled from dehydration.  Despite Tony’s advice, he hadn’t managed to sleep very late and he ended up dragging himself into the living room before Tony even woke up.

He wrapped up in a blanket while he snoozed a bit on the couch and half-watched an episode of Sherlock until Tony woke up.  He didn’t have to wait long.  Less than an hour later, the engineer showed up.  He didn’t look much worse for wear.

“You’re not dead, are you?” Tony said as he sat on the couch.

“Only halfway there,” Bruce said.

Tony handed him a carton of coconut water.  “Drink,” he said.  “Are you hungry?”

Bruce groaned.  “I think I’d be sick again.”

“No, you’re probably hungrier than you think.  What you need is a big plate of eggs and pancakes and greasy hash browns.  Maybe some ranchero sauce…”

Bruce kicked him. 

“Ok, ok,” Tony continued.  “Miso soup.  We’ll order some in a little bit.”

That actually sounded pretty good.

“Ok,” Bruce said.   “Miso soup sounds ok.”

“You heard the man, J.  Make it happen.”

“As you wish, Sir, but Captain Rogers is approaching.”

Bruce groaned again.  “I think I’m supposed to go running with him,” he said.

The elevator dinged and opened, and Bruce quickly composed an excuse in his head.  But when he sat up to look, Steve wasn’t in his workout clothes.  He was wearing pressed khakis, a bright blue button-down shirt, and a blazer on top.

“Hey Steve,” Bruce said.  “Were we supposed to…”  He was too thrown off by Steve’s outfit to finish his sentence.

“It’s Sunday,” Steve said.  “I’m going to church and I was wondering if you might want to go with me.”

Tony snorted.  “You’re telling me that, after all you’ve seen, all you’ve done, everything you’ve been through to be here right now, after all that, you still believe in God?”

Steve leveled a keen, even stare at Tony.  “How could I not?”

Tony laughed.  He waved his hand at Steve. “Hey, Bruce, don’t let me influence you. If you want to go, then go.”

Bruce sucked in a breath and chewed on his lip as he considered.  Tony was looking away, still smirking to himself, but he knew that Tony didn’t really care if he went or not.  It was enticing, and part of him did want to go with Steve and sit next to him in a big church and listen to words of salvation and mercy…but then he heard those words again.

_I’m your guardian angel._

_Let me help you._

“Uh…thanks, Steve, but maybe next time.”

“Ok.  Anytime you want to go, Bruce, I’ll go with you.” Steve’s face was open, honest, and Bruce knew he meant it. 

****

Bruce dozed through the morning, willing his headache to go away.  He woke up around noon to the smell of miso soup and the sound of clinking glass. 

Tony stood at the bar, placing the full bottles into a cardboard box and pouring the rest down the sink.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, and thank you so much for the encouragement and comments!


	11. Something to...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce's morning starts out well but takes a turn for the worse.

The next day, Tony spent the morning in the shop working on Steve’s motorcycle.  It started as a regular tune-up, but Tony was nothing if not thorough when it came to machines, and he soon had half the engine spread out across the shop. 

Bruce had meant to spend the time in his lab, tinkering with his own distractions, but shadows started to haunt the corners of his vision.  That wasn’t so bad, but then he began hearing voices in the white noise hum of the machines.  It sounded like someone was calling his name, but when he turned off the machines the voices would disappear.  So he had given up and taken refuge in Tony’s shop where the music and clang of metal drowned out the voices and he could close his eyes and give in to the darkness where the shadows didn’t matter.

He was more comfortable than he should be, sitting on the floor with his back against a toolbox.  Tony had pulled out one of the drawers and set it on the floor so that his wrenches were in easy reach, and Bruce made himself busy passing tools to him and holding onto loose screws and nuts that threatened to roll across the floor.

After a while, he started to doze off.  He lingered between sleeping and waking, half-listening to the Led Zepplin album playing in the background.  But then a voice calling his name roused him.

“Yeah?” he said, dragging his eyes open.  “What’s up, Tony?”

Tony leaned his arms on the seat of the motorcycle and looked at him strangely.  “Nothing, why?”

“Didn’t you just—never mind, I’m hearing things.”

Tony shrugged.  “Well since we’re totally not on the subject, I’m having the quinjet moved from Iron Works to the hanger upstate.   I figure we should take Casanova on a test flight when it gets here.”

Bruce chuckled.  “Well, Clint did charm you out of that plane, didn’t he?”

Tony’s eyebrows drew together.  “No, no, _Casanova_ is the Mark XVIII.  You know.  Stealth suit. The under cover lover?”

Bruce groaned and rubbed his hands over his eyes.  “That’s…I don’t even know, Tony.”

“Strangely appropriate?”

“Let’s go with strange.  But Clint’s going to fly the quinjet, right?”

“Well, yeah.  That’s the whole point.  It’s his plane now.  Even though technically I am footing the gas bill.”

“You lost that bet on purpose,” Bruce said.

Tony shrugged.  “I’ve lost lots of bets.”  He held out his hand.  “Half-inch socket.”  Bruce handed over the requested tool and Tony ducked back behind the bike.  “Besides,” his muffled voice filtered through layers of metal and oil, “our hawk has been looking a little clipped lately.”

“Clipped?” Bruce prompted.  He ran a hand over his own hair a little self-consciously.  It was growing back in quite well now, but not long enough to curl yet. 

Tony looked at him from over the seat of the bike.  There was a new grease stain streaking across his cheek and into his goatee.  “Yeah.  What else do you call a bird who can’t fly?

The dots connected in Bruce’s head.  If they weren’t part of SHIELD anymore, then Clint had no access to a quinjet or any plane for that matter.  He wasn’t like Tony with a private fleet and a shop big enough to _make_ a plane whenever he wanted.

Tony sat up and grabbed the rag that DUM-E was waving at him to wipe his hands on.  The cloth was about as greasy as Tony was, so all it did was move the dirt around a little.

“And, well, I couldn’t just _give_ him the plane.”  Tony made a face.  “He doesn’t want a pity present.  Better to let him take it on his own terms and he pretty much walked right into that one.”

Bruce’s mind flashed back to the lab in the forgotten little corner of the Tower with his name etched on the door.  How long had Tony waited for him to ask for it?  Bruce shook his head with a small smile.

“You amaze me a little more every day,” Bruce said.

Tony flashed a Hollywood-worthy grin.  “Is it my astounding intellect or my roguish good looks?”

Bruce leaned over and tapped a finger against the arc reactor.  “It’s your heart, hiding under all those shiny lights and metal bits there.”

Tony shoved him playfully away and ducked back under the engine.  They were quiet for a long moment, and Bruce leaned back against the tool chest, listening to the clank of Tony’s tools and the beat of the music in the background. 

The shadows and the voices didn’t bother him again that morning.

****

Eventually, Bruce headed upstairs in search of food.  Tony insisted he wasn’t hungry, though Bruce suspected it was because he was too involved in finishing up the bike to bother washing up.  He had that slightly obsessive-manic-determined look in his eye that told Bruce he wouldn’t be convinced until the job was done.  So Bruce just refilled his coffee and left him to it. 

He found Steve in the common kitchen looking for something to make, and it didn’t look like he was having much luck.

Bruce poked around in the cupboards.  They needed to go shopping.   Usually, he and Steve picked up the fresh fruits and vegetables at the farmer’s market, but with the market closed, it looked like they were going to have to go to the grocery store soon or starve.  He pulled down a jar of Nutella to search behind it.

“What’s that?”  Steve asked from over his shoulder.

Bruce looked at the can in his hand.  “This?  Soup?”

“No.”  Steve reached over and grabbed the Nutella, turning it over in his hand.  “This.”

Bruce’s eyebrows shot up.  “You’ve never had Nutella?”

Steve shook his head, so Bruce took two spoons out the drawer and handed one to him.

“Don’t we need bread or something?” Steve asked, looking at the label a little more closely.

“What’s the good of having a super-soldier metabolism if you can’t eat 70% saturated fat with a spoon?” Bruce teased.  He opened the jar and dipped his spoon in, tilting it towards Steve so he could do the same.

“I haven’t done this since I was in college,” Bruce said around his mouthful of pure hazelnut cocoa heaven. 

Steve took a spoonful and tentatively licked it.  His eyes went wide.  “This is pure sugar,” he said, but he put the whole spoonful in his mouth. 

“Yeah,” Bruce said.  “Like it?”

Steve took the container out of Bruce’s hand and wandered to the couch, eating spoonfuls as he went.

“Hey!” Bruce called after him.

They sat on the couch for a while, watching the sun glisten over the water out the big picture window and having brief spoon wars over the Nutella jar.  That was one of his favorite things about Steve, Bruce mused.  He could just sit and watch the horizon for hours on end.   Tony always had music playing in the background, or one of JARVIS’s screens running, or the television tuned to the news.  The noise helped Tony think, or perhaps helped him block out his whirling thoughts, which Bruce was starting to appreciate in a way he never had before.  But Steve’s solid presence alone was enough to fill the silence.

“So, how are those hallucinations doing?” Steve asked.

Or not, Bruce thought.

“Better,” he replied.  He stuffed another spoon of Nutella in his mouth so he wouldn’t have to say any more.

“Going away?” Steve pushed.

“No,” Bruce admitted.  “But I know they’re not real.  It’s not a big deal.”

“Hmm…” Steve hummed around his spoon.

A thin chocolaty swirl around the bottom of the jar was all that was left.  Bruce ran the edge of his spoon around the rim, but it was a lost cause.

“Tell Tony yet?”

“No,” Bruce said.

“Want me to?”  Steve’s voice was warm and caring and there wasn’t any Nutella left to hide behind.

“No.  But thanks.”

They lapsed into silence again.  Steve stared out the window without looking at anything in particular, and his blue eyes had the slightly blank look that meant he was lost in thought or memory.  Bruce let his head fall back against the back of the couch and his gaze settled on the clouds over the horizon.  A lazy peace settled over them and Bruce could almost feel himself drifting off again.

Bruce’s eyes fluttered closed, and as they did, he caught a glimpse of Steve in the corner of his eye, watching him with an expression of vague interest.  Something about the tilt of his head or the look on his face reminded Bruce of the Hallucination Steve that watched over him when he was …

…and, suddenly, he was back, strapped down naked in a glass cage, choking on the too-sweet-sour smell of the gas…

But something was different this time because Hallucination Steve’s eyes widened and he slid off the end of the couch to kneel in front of Bruce.  This was wrong, so _wrong_ and Bruce flinched backwards.

“Bruce?  Hey, Bruce, talk to me, buddy.  Where are you right now?”

He couldn’t back up any more without scrambling over the back of the couch, and his heart pounded so fast he could feel it in the back of his throat.  He had to calm down or else…

“Where are you, Bruce?”

“What?”

Quieter, but more urgent.  “Do you know where you are, Bruce?  Doc?”

When he could focus again, Bruce looked up to see Steve sitting on the coffee table across from the couch, his arms resting, neutral and relaxed, on his knees and his spine curved to make himself seem smaller.  In his faded blue t-shirt and jeans, he was as non-threatening as a super-soldier could get. 

Bruce licked his lips before he tried to speak.  “Uh, yeah.  The Tower.  New York.  Sorry, I just checked out for a minute there.”

Steve nodded, and patted Bruce’s knee as he stood.  He retrieved one of Tony’s fancy artesian water bottles from the refrigerator and pressed it into Bruce’s hand as he sat back down, a little closer to Bruce than he was before.

 They were quiet for a few moments more.  The cold water helped Bruce wake up a little bit from his haze.  Then, Steve sighed.

“Natasha’s told me about some rumors that she feels she should follow up on,” he said.  “I think I should go with her.”

“What kind of rumors?”

Steve shifted in his seat.  “An old enemy.  Might be a ghost story, though, if ends up to be true she could use some back up.”

“You know where to find us if you end up fighting a giant robot or a…T Rex or something.”

“Same goes for you.  Bruce, I need to know that someone here is looking after you when I’m not.”

Thanks to his dark complexion and habit of repression, Bruce didn’t blush often but he felt the hot flush of blood wash over his face and anger rose in his throat so thick he could choke on it.  Just because Steve was team captain, it didn’t make him Bruce’s nanny.  And where the fuck was Steve every other time he _actually_ needed help—

Bruce sucked in a deep breath, let it fill up his chest and he concentrated on the sound of the air in his throat until it filled the space between his ears and there wasn’t any more room for the words that make up thoughts.  After a few seconds, he could feel his heart rate start to slow as his body processed the adrenaline out of his blood.

He was angry, he couldn’t deny that.  But he wasn’t angry at Steve.  He knew Steve was doing what he was always going to do: the “right thing.”  He just wished the “right thing” wasn’t so difficult all the time.

“I need you to tell Tony before I leave,” Steve continued once he was sure he had Bruce’s attention again.  “Don’t say that he won’t understand because that’s not even giving him a chance.  But, Bruce, you need someone in your corner to help you fight this…heck, to fight anything at all because you have the strength of a whole team behind you.”

Bruce shook his head.  “Steve, it’s ok.  I’ve always been ok.  It just takes time.  And everyone else has his own mental mess to deal with—“ He swiped at the air to punctuate his point.

“Exactly!” Steve said, mouth curving into a smile that just pissed Bruce off even more.  “We’ve all been to hell and back at least once.  Sure, sometimes the road is smoother than others, but we’ve all been there.  No one’s going to make you feel badly if you cry over nothing or wake up screaming from nightmares or have a flashback in the middle of a Starbucks and have to call Clint Barton for a ride home.”

Bruce winced in sympathy.  “Clint, huh?”

“Well there was no way I was going to call Tony, and you don’t have a valid driver’s license.”

Steve stood up, took the two spoons and the empty jar and dumped them in the sink.  Halfway out the door, he turned back and leaned on the jamb.

“Remember, Bruce,” he said, “the first qualification of being an Avenger is that you have to have something to _avenge._ ”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi readers, 
> 
> Thanks, first of all, for you unending patience. And I have to say that I have no intention of abandoning this story. So thank you so much for the encouragement and the comments while I've been away!


	12. Playing Hero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint needs a favor and Bruce gets a chance to play hero

“Doc! Bruce!”

Bruce nearly jumped out of his skin, jostling a tray of samples and scrambling to right a few stray test tubes in the process.  Carefully, he slid the tray further onto the counter so he wouldn’t turn around and knock it over. 

It was Clint.

“You left the door open,” Clint said. 

Bruce didn’t think he left the door open, but the sunglasses were pushed up off Clint’s face and there was a look of apprehension in his clear blue eyes that stole Bruce’s attention.

“What’s wrong?”

“I need a favor.”

*****

Clint’s favor lived in an old brick apartment building in Brooklyn.  Bruce set his bag down on the worn bedroom carpet and shook off his jacket as he looked down at his patient.  She looked like she was ten, maybe eleven years old, all long black hair and wide eyes.

“Hi there, Jess.  I’m Bruce.  I’m a doctor.  Your mom says you’re not feeling too well.”  He could feel the heat radiating off her body, even through the blankets.  The room was chill, though Clint had said on the way over that he had already had the heat turned back on.

The girl didn’t answer, but Bruce was used to dealing with shy children.  He smiled and explained what he was doing as he took her temperature and felt her lymph nodes and ran the stethoscope over her chest.  Her mother watched nervously from the doorway, but he knew how to give her the right reassuring glances at the right time.

“The bad news, sweetie,” he said, “is that I think you have pneumonia.  But the good news is that I brought the right medicine for that, so hopefully you’ll start feeling better right away.”

Bruce took the mother out into the living room to give her the medications he had brought and explain what to do.  Clint stood in the kitchen, unpacking a paper sack of groceries, and there was a new space heater, still in its box, just inside the door.  Bruce smiled to himself.  Well, at least Clint made himself useful.

A few minutes later, they were walking down the cold, grey sidewalk again.  The sky was darkening, but Bruce’s heart felt a little lighter.  He hefted his bag on his shoulder and shoved his cold hands into his coat pockets.

“So this is what you do all day?  Play Robin Hood?”

Clint’s sunglasses were back over his eyes again, but he smirked.  “Yeah, pretty much.  What’s the matter, Doc?  Do you miss it?”

Bruce smiled and he could see himself reflected back in the purple lenses.  “Yeah, I do.”  He took a deep breath of almost-winter air, and he knew it was his imagination, but he felt like he could feel every molecule as they filled his lungs.

“It’s nice to be able to afford to do it for free,” he added.

The archer grinned.  “Lots of sick kids in New York who can’t afford a doctor,” he said.

Clint opened his mouth to say more but his expression changed, and because Bruce was still looking at the reflection in his glasses, he could see why.  From behind Bruce, a car sped towards the red light with no sign of stopping.  Bruce spun around, pushing Clint away as he dove in the other direction just as the car squealed past.  He landed and rolled on the asphalt, and somewhere near there was the crunch of fiberglass and shattering lights.

Bruce pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and shook his head.  He was in the middle of the street.  Further down the block, the speeding car was smashed against a light post, and on the opposite side of the street, an overturned car was in flames.  Clint was already on his feet and running towards the flaming car.  Bruce stumbled to his feet and followed.

Clint tried to open the driver’s side door, but it was jammed shut.  Bruce slid onto his belly, shoving the pebbles of broken windshield out of the way so he could see into the car.  The driver was suspended by his seatbelt, upside down and unconscious, but there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the car.

Bruce pushed himself up.  “One guy, and he’s out,” he told Clint.

Clint didn’t answer. His face was red and he panted as he strained against the door.  Bruce grabbed the frame and threw his weight backwards, but it didn’t seem to help. 

Clint gave one last pull.  “We need a jack or something.  Some leverage.”  He went towards the back of the car, but jumped back, swearing.  “Bruce, gas.  Lots of gas.”

“Yeah, ok.  We can do this.” 

Bruce lowered himself back down to see if he could get in through the window, but even when he knocked out the rest of the glass, the doorframe was too bent to fit through.  Clint tried the other side, but there was no luck.

He could feel the heat and his sinuses and eyes burned with gas fumes.  The Other Guy woke inside him as his system flooded with adrenaline, and he fought down sheer panic and helplessness because he was a fucking genius and he couldn’t get the goddam door open and this man was going to die right here.

Hands grabbed at his shoulders, pulling him up, and away, and he clawed at them to let him go because he couldn’t leave. 

“Bruce…Bruce!  It’s going to blow.  You can’t…”

Bruce turned and looked Clint in the eyes.  The flames raged in purple reflection. 

“Clint.  Go.  Run. It can’t hurt me.”

Clint abruptly let go, but he didn’t run.  Whatever.  Bruce grabbed the edge of the door again.  He closed his eyes and reached down inside himself to the floodgate that kept back all the panic and fear and rage and let it slip as he _pulled_.

The door ripped like paper in his hands.  He barely registered Clint’s “Holy shit!” as he threw the door aside because he was already reaching into his boot and opening his multitool, flipping out the blade to cut through the seatbelt.  Clint was there again, reaching in to help him drag the man out.

“Run, Bruce,” Clint urged as he threw the man over his shoulders.

They didn’t get very far before the car blew.  Bruce was thrown to the ground, and the world spun in a kaleidoscope of greys and blacks.  After what seemed like a long time, he managed to lift his head. 

Clint lay a few yards away.  Bruce half crawled, half stumbled over to him.   Now, there were paramedics and police already attending to the car accident victim a few feet away.  It looked like maybe Clint had managed to throw him farther away, or maybe the blast itself had done that.

“Clint?”

He didn’t answer, but he was breathing.  His face was wet from a bleeding cut on his forehead.

“Hawkeye?”

That got a furrowed brow and a groan in response, and Bruce sagged in relief.  After another long moment, Clint’s eyes squinted open.  Bruce leaned over him to try to get a good look at his pupils.

“Did you go a little green back there?” Clint rasped.

Bruce sighed and let himself fall back on his rear so he could fold his legs under him.  “I think you have a concussion.”

“I think I just saw your hands grow, like, five sizes and turn green and rip apart a car.”

“You definitely have a concussion.”

Clint sat up with a louder groan just as a police officer came to stand over them.  “Do either of you need to go to the hospital.”

Clint shook his head, then looked like he regretted it.  He jerked a thumb at Bruce.  “He’s a doctor.  We’ll be fine.”

That seemed to appease the officer.  “Ok, but don’t leave just yet.  I’ll need to get your statements.  But thank goodness you guys were here.  You two are real heroes.”

Clint glanced at Bruce over the edge his sunglasses.  “Thanks,” he said.

The officer started to turn away.  “Uh, Officer?” Bruce called him back.  “How’s the driver of the other car.”

The officer grimaced.  “They must have made a run for it because the car was empty.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello lovely readers,
> 
> I have missed you. Truly I have. I will hopefully have more for you very soon!


	13. Switch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the close call with the car accident, Bruce helps Clint back home. Then, he finds out that Tony needs some help, too.

Chapter 13

Bruce drove them home in the nondescript black car that Clint had borrowed from the Tower.   Clint didn’t argue; he slid quietly into the seat and leaned his head against the cool glass.  That worried the doctor more than anything.

“Hey,” Bruce said softly, “stay awake, ok?  Just until we get to the Tower.  I can’t carry you up to bed by myself.”

The corner of Clint’s mouth quirked up.  “I bet you could.  But…yeah…concussion.  Staying awake is good.”

Bruce pulled out into street but had to break hard as another car pulled out in front of him and cut him off almost immediately.  Clint groaned and pressed a hand to his head and Bruce winced.

“Sorry,” Bruce said.  “I’m not used to the traffic.”

“Yeah, I know,” Clint said.  “It’s ok.  Take the scenic route.  Got any aspirin?”

“Yeah, but that’s not so great for bleeding.  And there’s stronger stuff back at home.”

“I’ll wait then,” Clint said and he leaned further against the window.

The rest of the trip back to the Tower was thankfully uneventful.  From the garage, Bruce ushered Clint into the elevator and told JARVIS to take them to his lab. 

“I want to take some images and make sure your head’s ok.  Alright?”

“Sure,” Clint said, but his response was a little slow and his steps were uncharacteristically clumsy as he walked over to the small sitting area and flopped down on the couch.

There wasn’t an MRI scanner or anything like that in Bruce’s lab—though he was sure he’d get one if he even hinted to Tony he could use it—but he did have the little hand-held one he had been working on.  So he brought that out along with the med kit and his glasses.  Clint was sprawled across the couch.  The cut on his head had stopped bleeding, but dried blood streaked down the side of his face and shirt.  The archer was quiet as Bruce cleaned up the blood to get a good look at the cut.  It was long, but shallow, so Bruce closed it up with a pair of butterfly bandages.

“Ok, now, lie back and so I can make sure you’re ok,” Bruce said as he adjusted a pillow on the couch so that Clint could lie full-length.  Then he picked up the scanner, which didn’t look like much more than a tablet connected to a microphone.

Clint did as he was requested, though he looked a little warily at the device.  “Never had a CT scan on a couch before.  Could get used to this.  What is that thing anyway?”

Bruce pushed his glasses up onto his nose.  He could read the tablet just fine, but the extra information JARVIS provided for him over the glasses’ display never did hurt.

“It’s a medical imager,” Bruce answered.  “It uses gamma rays.”

Clint burst out laughing, but it faded when Bruce didn’t join in.  “Oh shit, you’re serious.”

Bruce did chuckle then and Clint’s smile made a valiant effort to return.  “Yeah, I’m serious.  But don’t worry.  It can’t emit, just detect, so it’s just using the extremely low-levels of gamma you’re giving off already.  You won’t feel anything. I can use something else, but we’d have to go to an actual hospital…”

Clint leaned back a little more.  “Nah, go ahead.”

Bruce took the receiver and glided the smooth metal over Clint’s forehead, almost touching his skin, but not quite.  “I made this for Tony,” Bruce explained as he worked.  “But he doesn’t stand still long enough for me to test it on him.” 

Clint closed his eyes and shivered a little, but otherwise didn’t react, so Bruce shifted his focus to the tablet.  As he circled Clint’s head, a 3D image began to form.  It was still buggy, so some of it was distorted, especially where Clint’s hair got in the way, but it was pretty clear to Bruce where the damage was.  As if to second his opinion, JARVIS highlighted the injury on the Stark Glasses overlay. 

“You have a concussion, but you’ll be ok.  Any problems hearing since we’ve gotten home?”

Clint looked at him a little funny.  “Nothing new.”

“Ok, then I think you know the routine.  Get rest, and be really careful for a few weeks.  No more stopping cars with your head.”

Bruce started to rise and put away the scanner, but a strong hand closed around his wrist.  “You saved that man, Bruce,” Clint said, and his blue eyes caught Bruce’s gaze in an even stronger hold.  “I could not have opened that door.”  He let go.  “And, man!  How long have you been able to do that?”

“It was an accident,” Bruce insisted.  “For all I knew, I could have ripped that whole car apart with the man still inside.”  That thought had not actually occurred to him until he said it aloud, and he wanted to be sick.

Now it was Clint’s turn to pull him down on the couch.  “No, no, no.  That’s not how it happened.  You did well, Doc.”

Bruce didn’t have an answer, and Clint looked like his head was hurting too much to be good conversation.  After a few more moments, Clint’s head slowly tipped back on the couch and he dozed.

****

After delivering Clint to his own bed and Natasha’s care, Bruce wandered back down to his own room.  The sun was setting.  JARVIS alerted him for dinner, but he had no appetite so he kept walking.   He had to admit that it felt good to be needed today, to feel like he was doing some good for a change, like anything mattered at all.  That was a nice feeling.  Fleeting, but nice.

Now, he felt cold and tired.

He couldn’t wait until he could take a shower and slide between cool sheets—even it was only six in the evening—and just sleep and sleep and sleep…

…and his fucking door was locked.

Bruce tried it again, but even his personal override code wouldn’t work.

“JARVIS!”

“Sir requests your presence in the penthouse.”

“Tell ‘Sir’ to go fuck himself.  I want a shower.”

There was a long enough pause that Bruce wondered if JARVIS actually relayed the message.

“Sir wishes to remind you there is a shower in the penthouse.”

Bruce trudged back to the elevator, cursing to himself the entire ride.  He couldn’t even unlock his own fucking door if he wanted to.  And the others were always wondering why Bruce felt so trapped all the damn time.

The elevator dinged, but didn’t open.  JARVIS was giving him a chance to either get his bearings or change his mind.  He paced back and forth in the few small feet of space before stepping out into the penthouse. 

The room was dim and silent.  The darkness seemed to drink in the faint light spilling in from the bedroom door, so Bruce followed the arrow of light.  He pushed the door open slowly because it was dim in there, too, and Tony might be sleeping.  But the bed was empty.

Braced on the carpet, Tony was kneeling, naked, by the side of the bed, his head pushed so far forward that it rested on the floor so that even if he knew Bruce was in the room, he couldn’t show it.  Beside him on the floor was a small folded notecard, with a snowflake drawn on the cover.

Inside, it read, simply:  I am yours.  You are not going to hurt me. 

Bruce’s mind reeled.  Tony?  His?  For what?  He looked around the room at a loss and his eyes rested on Tony’s naked back, all smooth olive skin and shifting muscle.   Then, he saw what his casual glance had missed on the bed.  There was an arrangement of devices laid out on the sheets.  Some were familiar to Bruce, now, and some were not.

A long, braided leather whip made Bruce shy from that whole area of the bed.  He knew what it felt like when leather like that broke skin, and it wasn’t something he was interested in.  There were clamps, big enough to put just about anywhere, connected with short chains.  He swept all that aside.

Bruce knelt down in front of Tony and guided him back into a sitting position.  “What’s all this about, Tony?  Talk to me,” he said softly.

He regretted the questions immediately when Tony’s eyes met his and he saw the loss and confusion there.  “Clint told us about this morning.  He said that you were so in control, so much like the Bruce we see peeking through.  I thought maybe if _you_ were the one who were in control, it might be easier for you…us.”

“And all that?” Bruce gestured to the bed. 

Tony shrugged.  “Something new.”  He smiled, almost shyly.  “Maybe a little for me.”

“I don’t think I can, even if you want me to,” Bruce said.  He turned his face away so he wouldn’t have to see Tony’s response.

“Ok, then we don’t.  No problem.”

Suddenly, urgently, Bruce said, “Do you want me to?”

“Yes.  Oh, yes!”

“What if I _can’t_?”

Bruce’s statement puzzled Tony so much that he pulled his folded legs out from under him so he could stretch out and think.  The fact that he was naked on the floor didn’t seem to particularly bother him.  “Do you want my professional diagnostics?”

“It’s diagnosis.”

“Ok, tell me, what is on the ‘can’t’ list?  We could make a spreadsheet.  Is this a gradient-type  measurement rather than a flat yes-no?”

“I’m not sure.  Sometimes it’s both.”

Tony nodded sagely.  “Ok, let’s make this really, really easy then.  We’re not having sex tonight because there are more important issues at stake here.” Bruce nearly squawked in shock.  “But, Bruce, tonight, I need you to be in control.”

“Why?”

“I just do.”

Bruce stood up slowly so he stood before Tony’s form kneeling again on the carpet.  Tony bent forward again in the perfect picture of supplication.

“I don’t know what to do,” Bruce admitted after a quiet moment of admiration.

“Whatever you want, Snowflake.”

Bruce roared “I’m not a fucking SNOWFLAKE!” and his equilibrium was already compromised enough that he could feel the bass of Hulk’s voice in his chest. 

Even though Tony was bent too far forward to see the green receding from his complexion, he still trembled.  The sight was satisfying in a dark way.  Tony didn’t answer.  Maybe he couldn’t.

Suddenly, Bruce was shaking, too, and he sat down hard on the bed.  Tony still didn’t move. 

“What safeword do you want to use?” he said, keeping his voice carefully measured this time.

Warm air brushed his ankles as Tony exhaled long and hard.  “Green.  Yellow.  Red.”

The familiar praise choked in Bruce’s throat.  It felt wrong coming from him, and he didn’t really know what else to say.  “Good job?”  that was impersonal.  So, hesitantly, jerking his hand back once or twice, Bruce ran his hand down Tony’s hair.  The engineer shivered again and arched into his hand.

Bruce looked again at the toys strewn on the bed.  Impact tools made up the majority: whips and paddles and crops of various sizes.  Most were leather, and the rich scent rose into the air as Bruce examined a few and placed them back down.  Tony’s breathing was harsh.  He knew which area of the bed Bruce was perusing.  Bruce picked up a leather crop with a polished wood handle.  It had a nice weight to it, but it wasn’t heavy.  He ran his hand down the leather and was pleased to find it oiled so it was smooth as silk.

Tony didn’t set out much in terms of restrains.  There were handcuffs made of metal that would bite into the skin if he twisted and pulled.  But, opening the bedside drawer, Bruce found the old brown leather cuffs Tony kept there for him.  They were showing signs of wear, but that also made them supple in just the right places.

There was a grunt of surprise from Tony as he felt Bruce draw his hands up behind his bent back and buckle them together.  He wriggled his fingers to show that he was ok, which made Bruce smile where he couldn’t see it.  Then, he stepped back to admire his prize.

The patience of the Great Tony Stark was soon coming to an end.  He was still on the carpet, but his even breathing was punctuated with sighs of impatience.  Watching Tony squirm naked on the floor was actually amusing, Bruce admitted, but he was growing tired.  Leaving Tony on the floor, he cleared the bed into the empty box sitting off to the side and pulled back the covers.  Then he returned to Tony.

Tony shuddered, bone deep, when the tip of the crop lightly brushed from nape his neck all the way down the crack of his ass, but he didn’t break position.  He didn’t seem bored anymore, though.  Bruce used the soft leather of the whip to trace softly along Tony’s sides, down each arm, and across the upturned soles of his feet.  Tony panted, but otherwise didn’t speak.

“Color?” Bruce asked.

“Green,” Tony laughed.  “Don’t be absurd, Banner.”

Bruce cracked the length of the crop lightly across Tony’s feet.

“Green,” Tony said, as if he were answering a challenge.

But, no, that wasn’t a road Bruce wanted to explore today.  He was done causing pain.  He didn’t want to hurt anyone anymore. 

He glanced again at the bed.  Objects that cause sensation.  Not the blindfolds, the ropes and the cuffs that he offered to Bruce and that he had so readily accepted.  Those cut him off from the world, protected him from it—and it from him.

Bruce knew what he had to do.

The cuffs came off, though Tony mewled a protest.  Bruce never told Tony he couldn’t speak, but if he wanted to meow like a cat through this, then he could go right ahead.  Bruce stepped back and ran the leather crop up and down Tony’s spine again, just to watch him arch into it.  Then, he gently placed the flat of the end under Tony’s chin and guided his head up and up until he was sitting back on his heels.

The look in Tony’s eyes was indeed like a cat who gobbled down a turkey dinner, slightly dazed and sated, but ready to go back for more. 

“Up,” Bruce said.  He used the crop to guide Tony to his feet and over to the bed.  He didn’t touch him, except to brush the crop against his side or the soft spots behind his legs until he was in the perfect position, sprawled on the bed.  Still, he used the gentle brush and push of the crop to adjust him a little more, make him pull his leg up a bit here and turn his wrist more there.  By the time he was satisfied, Tony’s breathing was calm and his eyes were half-closed.

Bruce set aside the crop as he climbed onto the bed beside Tony.  The other man turned his head to smile sleepily at him.  Bruce stroked his cheek.  It felt like sandpaper.

“You can talk, you know.  If you want,” Bruce said.

“I know,” Tony said, barely a whisper.  But he didn’t say any more.

“Are you ok here for a few minutes?” Bruce asked. 

Tony looked puzzled.  Well, he wasn’t exactly tied down or anything.  “Yeah, sure,” he said.

Bruce walked out to the kitchen, but turned back in the doorway to see Tony, spread out on the bed and exposed to the cool air.   Every last millimeter of him was beautiful, from the over-gelled hair (which was actually soft and feathery when he left it alone) to the too-sharp goatee, and the layers of muscles that he earned from hard work and necessity.  And Tony did like showing off.  He was wriggling his toes to feel the air between them.

Bruce hunted through the small bar fridge for something to eat, since Tony had apparently skipped dinner as well.  Most of the liquor was gone, replaced with mineral water and snacks and fruit for smoothies.  He was pleased to find a good selection of cheese, an apple and a pear.  It was quick work to cut everything up and arrange it on a plate.  He grabbed a bottle of water and returned to the bedroom.

Tony was just as he’d left him.  Bruce sat on the edge of the bed and pulled Tony more or less into his lap.  “Did you eat dinner?” he asked.

“No,” Tony said.  “Drank too much coffee earlier.  Not hungry.”

“Hmmm,” Bruce said as he took a piece of apple from the plate and brushed it against Tony’s lips.  Quick teeth seized it from his fingers, almost snapping him in their hurry.  “Forget it, feed yourself,” Bruce said, but he laughed as he took the plate from the nightstand to place it on the bed where they could both reach.  Tony snatched up bites of cheese and fruit.

While Tony was preoccupied with the food, Bruce rose and stretched.  He really wanted a shower, so he headed in the direction of the bathroom.

“Bruce…?”

“Eat, Tony,” Bruce said firmly.  “All of it.  And when you’re done, lie down again until I get back.  I was almost in a car wreck today.  I want a fucking shower.”

“Ok…Bruce,” Tony said in a slightly dazed voice.

Bruce avoided looking the mirror on the way to the shower.  He was sure he was an absolute mess, and his opinion was validated when he stepped under the spray and the water came off him grey.  Little pieces of gravel and asphalt caught in the drain.  He used Tony’s expensive shampoo and then leaned his head against the wall as the spray washed the suds down his back. 

The water was rejuvenating.  Steam curled up and into his lungs, loosening the tight feeling in his chest.  And Tony was being so…easy…it was astounding.  Bruce wasn’t quite sure what to do with him next, though.  A fleeting wish that someone had given him a chance to research the idea first crossed his mind.

But Tony was waiting.  He couldn’t stay in the shower forever. 

Hot steam fogged the shower doors and mirrors by the time Bruce got out and toweled himself off.  The only clothes he brought were far too dirty to wear again, but he hadn’t brought any others.  Still, the carefully temperature-controlled air felt deliciously cold on Bruce’s overheated skin.  He stopped for a moment to consider if he would feel comfortable enough sleeping naked with Tony, but then he remembered that Tony had promised they wouldn’t have sex—at least not right now.  Bruce was surprised to realize that he felt just fine with the idea.

Bruce left the damp shelter of the bathroom.  Tony was back in the position where Bruce had originally placed him on the bed, though he noted the empty plate was moved to the bedside table.  Tony was watching with tired eyes.  He looked so exhausted.  No wonder, if he’d been running on coffee all day.  It looked like the caffeine had run out before his mind did, and he had turned to Bruce for some kind of relief.

“Turn over on your stomach.  Hands by your sides, palms up,” Bruce instructed.

Tony obeyed immediately.  Tentatively, Bruce crawled onto the bed and straddled Tony’s weight.  He felt Tony’s hips press up, not to buck him off, but to get more contact. 

“Shh,” Bruce hushed as he swept soothing strokes up and down Tony’s bare back.  Tony drew in a deep, shuddering breath.

Bruce splayed his hands across Tony’s shoulders, the heels of his hands resting along his backbone.  If he pressed down at the right angle with both hands in towards Tony’s spine, he could feel the faint hum of the arc reactor.  Tony breathing hitched, and then he sighed.

“Am I hurting you?” Bruce asked.

“Oh, god, no,” Tony replied, a little breathless.  “That’s really strange.  It’s like it’s taking pressure off the front where it always hurts, but then again, there’s this electric buzzing all up and down my spine.  Weird.”

“Good weird?”

“Not sure. Do it again.”

Bruce did, increasing the pressure just a tiny bit when Tony didn’t complain.

“Yeah, good weird,” Tony panted.  “But don’t do it again right now.”

He moved lower, towards Tony’s lumbar where he rubbed sometimes when no one was looking.  After a few minutes, Tony was melting into the mattress.   Bruce worked his way up one arm, back across his shoulders and down the other.

“That feels great,” Tony said.

“You do it for me.  And, Tony, you don’t need to give me anything in return.  There’s no price to pay for this.  We should switch more often.”

Tony tried to sit up a little, but Bruce put a hand on his arm to keep him still.  “How are you liking this?”

“I don’t really know.  I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Whatever it is, it’s wonderful,” Tony said, arching up into Bruce’s hands a bit to get them moving again.

“Who’s really in control here?” Bruce muttered as he continued to massage Tony’s neck and shoulders. 

Tony smirked.  “Lie down with me,” he said, and he turned around so he could pull Bruce into his arms and tumble them into the sheets. 

Bruce let it happen, let himself go loose and roll so that he didn’t hurt Tony on the way down.  But the pillow was soft, and damp from his hair, and smelled like Tony’s shampoo. 

“Good night, JARVIS!” Tony said.  “Ha.  Beat you to it.”

“Good night, Dr. Banner, Mr. Stark,” JARVIS answered.  The lights slowly faded off.

“Still his favorite, huh?”  But Tony didn’t sound particularly jealous.

“Good night, JARVIS,” Bruce answered. 

Tony clasped Bruce tight to his chest. “Yeah,” he said into his ear, “Yeah, it is.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, and following, and being patient.


	14. Shattered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the war for Bruce's sanity, an invisible player makes a move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the more serious stories warnings are, so read with caution and beware of the overall warnings.

Bruce awoke in the dark, warm breath tickling the back of his neck and Tony’s arm draped across him.  His arm was asleep, so he shifted around to extricate it from under his weight.  The feeling came back slowly, but he couldn’t get comfortable so he turned over so he could at least watch the shadows change as the arc reactor’s light shifted with Tony’s breath.  He looked like he was soundly asleep, so whatever Bruce had done had worked to some degree. Or else the irrepressible engineer had just finally run out of steam.

After a few more minutes of lying still, Bruce realized that he wasn’t going back to sleep any time soon.  Slowly, he scooted to the end of the bed and got up.  He had to pee anyway, so he padded quietly over to the bathroom.

The sudden light blinded him, and his eyes watered as he stumbled to the toilet.  He peed and flushed and leaned over the sink to wash his hands.  Running the tap on cold, he splashed his face in an attempt to abate the headache that was starting to form right behind his eyes.  The chill water took some of the heat from his skin, but he still felt like he was burning up.

Blindly, he groped for a towel and dried his face.  Squinting into the light, he glanced into the mirror and startled to see the Hulk staring back at him.  But after a few hard blinks, the form dissolved into his own reflection and he sighed in relief.

Bruce often saw the Hulk in the mirror.  That was nothing new.  He tied the towel around his waist and reached to flick off the light.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Bruce’s reflection in the mirror said to him.

Bruce froze, and it felt like his stomach dropped out of his feet.  He could see his reflection in the corner of his eye, arms crossed and staring at him.  He didn’t want to turn and look, but he couldn’t even force himself to breathe again until he did.

“Don’t go back in there,” the reflection said, not unkindly.  “It’s not going to end well for any one.”

Bruce was staring now, facing the reflection-that-wasn’t.  Then it occurred to him—he was dreaming again.  The fear dropped away, though a sharp, sour taste rose in the back of his throat.  He stalked up to the mirror.

“You can take a flying leap off a cliff,” he said, looking right into his own brown eyes.

The corners of those eyes crinkled in a smirk.  “You know that’s not going to work.”

“Doesn’t hurt to try.  Look, I’m going to wake up in there,” Bruce pointed sharply to the bedroom door, “next to someone who loves me, and nothing that happens here is going to change that.”

The reflection’s smirk turned sinister, then split as his skull grew too big for his skin and the Hulk burst through the doppelganger’s flesh and roared in fury.

Bruce braced his hands on the marble sink and didn’t break its gaze.  “I’m not scared of you, and this trick is getting old.  I’m going back to bed.”

He turned again to leave, but then a voice—that voice that he could never ignore—forced his gaze back to the mirror. 

It was Betty, calling his name.

“Bruce!” she pleaded.  “Bruce, I’m sorry.  No more tricks.  No games.  Just you and me like it used to be.  Remember how it used to be?”

Bruce stared.  She was wearing a black sweater, nothing fancy, but the contrast made her eyes look so blue they were almost as luminescent as Tony’s reactor.  But the colors were too bright, fake and flat like a pop art painting, and Bruce knew that she was just a shiny memory, gilded by time.

“Betty, I don’t think that past even existed.  I just…I hoped that it might exist one day.  Sometimes, I hoped so much that it was almost true.  But that’s not who I am anymore.  I don’t know if I ever was that person.”

“Stark thinks he knows you, but he doesn’t,” Betty said sadly.

“He tries.”

“You don’t know _him_ ,” Betty insisted.

And Bruce’s gaze flicked away for a second because the past few hours had proven that statement true.  He would have never expected for Tony to want—to _need_ at times—for Bruce to take the lead.  He had always been so content to have Bruce follow…

“He needs a lot more than what you can give to him,” Betty continued when he was slow to look up again.  “But you’ve always known that.  You knew that one day he was going to go somewhere you can’t follow.”

The reflection changed again, and Betty’s dress turned to olive green, and her features twisted, aged, and reformed into General Ross. Bruce didn’t realize how close he had drawn to the mirror and shrank back, nearly falling to the floor.

“I’m going to kill your boyfriend,” the General spat.  “I’m going to strap you down, make you watch, and measure what it does to you.  There’s no way I would sacrifice my own daughter, but I’d love to see what kind of emotional distress we can catalyze by torturing someone you love.  And I’ve wanted to put a knife in Stark’s liver ever since we first met.”

Bruce couldn’t take it anymore.  He roared and it felt like his heart was trying to rip itself out of his chest so it could personally beat Ross to a bloody pulp.  Without thinking, he drew back his fist and slammed it through Ross’s face.

He expected to see green, to see his arm morph and go straight through the wall.  But shards of glass shattered in every direction splattering the room in red, and when Bruce drew back his arm his mangled fist was dripping blood.

Then the pain hit, and Bruce realized he wasn’t dreaming after all.  In shock, he watched the blood ooze from gashes deep enough to show white bone.  After a few seconds of staring dumbly as the blood pumped over his fingers, his wits started to return.

“JARVIS!  Get Tony out of here and call hazmat!”

From far away, a siren wailed, and a solid metal door slid down between the bedroom and the bathroom as JARVIS’s voice came over the bathroom intercom.

“Dr. Banner, all the rooms in the penthouse can be sealed against radiation.  Please do not worry about Mr. Stark and see to your wounds.  I am summoning help.”

But Bruce wasn’t really listening because as he turned his hand over, he saw the large piece of mirrored glass lodged in his forearm, along the length of the bone.  Bruce’s vision greyed out and he sank to the floor, smearing the growing puddle of blood across the tile as he did.

“Bruce!”  Tony’s voice sounded really far away on the other side of the door.

“BRUCE!” Tony’s voice shrieked as JARVIS patched him into the intercom.  “What happened?”

“I’m bleeding.  A lot.  Stay away.”

“Bruce!  JARVIS, open the door!”

“JARVIS, don’t you dare!”

“JARVIS get the suit!”

“No, Tony!  If you open this door before the radiation is neutralized, you’re going to contaminate the whole floor!”

“Sirs,” JARVIS’s smooth voice cut through, “Agent Romanov and Agent Barton are currently retrieving the gamma neutralizers from Doctor Banner’s laboratory.  Please stay calm and the door will be open as soon as possible.”

“I’m here, Bruce,” Tony’s voice came back over the intercom.  “Still there?”

“Yeah,” Bruce replied, though he was starting to feel faint.  He knew better than to try to remove the glass before he had a better idea of what exactly had been sliced through.  Still, he thought distantly, it was going to be hard to stitch himself up with just his left hand.   Glass bit into the back of his thighs as he fell a bit more onto the floor and the towel slipped out from under him.

And the pieces of mirror were laughing at him.  He tried to kick them away, but he just cut his feet up more.

Deep in the wall, there was a metallic clank and the whir of a fan starting.

“Agent Barton is loading RG-27 into the ventilation system,” JARVIS said.  “Help is coming, Doctor Banner.”

Bruce closed his eyes.  After a few seconds, a cloyingly sweet scent drifted in the air.  It grew stronger, into a cloud of honeyed stench that made Bruce’s stomach turn on itself.  He fought the need to throw himself to the floor to try to suck some fresh air from the tile.  But he breathed in deeply, knowing that it was the only way to get out of there.  The gas caught in his sinuses and he retched. Vomit splattered down his chest and the floor because he couldn’t even push himself up enough to get to the toilet.

He was still heaving when the door slid open with a hiss.  Tony flew through first, followed by Clint and Natasha and—oh God—Steve, but he stopped dead in his tracks and his gaze flew wildly around the room.

“Shit, Bruce,” he said, aghast. 

Natasha shoved Tony out of the way and picked up the soiled towel.  “Can’t die of infection, right?”  She grabbed his arm and raised it up above his head, then wrapped the cloth around his arm and the edges of glass and pressed so hard that Bruce’s vision went black at the edges.

“You should wear gloves,” Bruce mumbled.

She raised one elegant eyebrow.  “It’s just blood.  At least I know what’s in yours.”

Bruce was too tired to respond, but he tried to smile.  It didn’t quite work the way he wanted it to.  Then, Steve was there with a syringe full of RG-27 to make sure any new blood pumped out of his veins was safe enough for everyone else, and another one full of morphine that made the chill in his limbs ebb a little.

“Bruce, stay with us,” Steve’s urgent voice said in his ear when his eyes drifted shut.  He forced them open again to see Steve’s bright blue eyes very close to his own.   He kept staring until the hazy feeling receded enough to let his eyes focus.

“Ok let’s see if he can stand,” Steve said to someone above his head.  And then he was being lifted up with a sturdy shoulder braced under each of his own, and Natasha holding his injured arm as tenderly as possible.

Still, Bruce blacked out as what little blood pressure he had left tanked with the change in position.

****

Bruce opened his eyes.  He blinked a few times, which was more difficult than he expected, so he kept them closed for now.  He was aware of being very warm, but it was a pleasant kind of warmth as if he had been cold for a long time before. 

A low murmur of voices rose and fell around him, but it sounded like they had been talking for a long time, and that he didn’t really need to be a part of the conversation. That was comforting, too, so he let himself drift.

Indeterminably long moments passed before Bruce was startled out of his doze by a vehement “NO!”

He gasped and jerked, and the room fell suddenly silent.

“Hey, Brucie,” Tony’s voice whispered close to him.  Bruce opened his eyes again to look at him, and whatever Tony was going to say died on his lips.  Bruce was reminded of the expression on his face on the Helicarrier when Loki’s scepter had made him reveal that horrible time when he found out he couldn’t die.

Tony eventually forced a smile, but Bruce was looking beyond him now.  He had his bearings now.  He was lying on the penthouse couch, swaddled in blankets and held in position with pillows against his back and between his knees.  He could feel raw skin on the back of his thighs and the side of his feet where he had scraped against shards of mirror.  But the cuts had been cleaned and dressed.  He attempted to free his right hand from the blanket, but pain shot up his entire arm and down his side.

Tony caught his shoulder to try to hold him still.  “Shh…stay still.  Natasha and Clint and Steve got all the glass out and stitched you up, but you lost a lot of blood.”  He took a clear tube from under a corner of blanket and showed it to Bruce.  “And so we’re giving you IV fluids to boost your blood volume.”

His dark coffee eyes drew together in distress.  “Are you in pain, Bruce?  What can I do for you?”

“Nothing.”  The answer took a surprising amount of energy to spit out.  “I thought I was dreaming.”

Tony swallowed and then glanced towards the door, over the back of the couch.  “They’re all going to come in here right now and want an explanation.  But you know it’s none of their goddam business what—“

“Tony, it _is_ their business,” Bruce said softly.  “They live here.  Sometimes.  They call the Tower home.  And I’m a natural disaster waiting to happen.”

Tony deflated.  “No, Bruce,” he said, his voice pitched low.  “You have it all wrong.”

“Sir, Captain Rogers is requesting permission to return with the team,” JARVIS announced.

Tony looked back down on Bruce bundled up on the couch.  He was dressed in black lounge pants and his brocade bathrobe and the gold threads caught the lamplight.  “Are you ready?”

“No,” Bruce answered.  “But I’ll never be.”

Tony nodded, which must have signaled JARVIS to open the door.  The other three entered hesitantly, and it seemed as though Bruce had been asleep for a while because they were all damp from the shower and wearing clean clothes.  Natasha had on yoga pants and a sleek sweater, while Clint and Steve had both went with t-shirts and sweats.

 Non-threatening.  As if he didn’t know that Natasha really liked those tight wide-leg pants because she could strap a knife to her calf, and no one ever figured out where she put it.  And he knew Clint had five different bows stashed in the walls, the ceiling, the cupboard, even under the couch he was lying on.  It was collectively known as the “couch bow.”  And Steve—was Steve.

But they all came in and sat in their usual spots.  Natasha even pulled an afghan up over her feet, allowing Clint to grab a corner for his own cold toes. 

“I’m sorry,” Bruce tried to say, but his voice was weak.

The three men started to all say something at once, and from the looks on their faces, it was to deny Bruce had anything to be sorry for.  But Natasha stood, effectively silencing them.

“About what?” she asked, seriously, looking right at Bruce as if it even mattered.

He didn’t want to say.  He really didn’t want to say it aloud.  Natasha looked like she was ready to wait the answer out of him.  He wondered if it was an interrogation tactic, but at the time it felt like a promise.

“I put everyone in danger, and I knew I was doing it, and I still didn’t tell anyone,” Bruce said in one big breath.

“That must be a new house rule.  I don’t remember that one,” Tony said, looking to each of his teammates.  “Otherwise I might need to move out, too.  Oh, whoops, own the place.”

“Stop being so defensive, Stark,” Steve said firmly.  “The only one who’s hurt here is Bruce, and we’re going to get this figured out right now.”

Right now.  Bruce squeezed his eyes shut.  If Steve thought it was a “right now” figuring-out type of problem, then he really didn’t understand, either.  When he opened his eyes, Steve was the one staring him down again, with an ultimatum written clear as day on his face:  either Bruce was going to have to say something or Cap would.

Steve drew his armchair closer to Bruce and leaned his arms on his elbows so he could drop his head down closer to Bruce’s level.  “Ok, Avenger, debrief.  Start with waking up in the middle of the night when Tony saw you leave the bed.”

Steve’s huge frame took up most of his field of view, shielding him, and Bruce was starting to suspect that they had snuck something other than saline into the line because everything came out in disjointed statements and stories of half-remembered dreams.  He started talking about the hallucinations, but then stopped when he didn’t want to admit where they came from, or what the girl in the dream kept wanting him to do.  He backtracked then to car crash, and not being able to sleep, but that didn’t make any sense, either, and he was babbling.

“Whoa, whoa,” Steve interrupted after it was apparent Bruce’s train of thought left the station a long time ago.  “Ok, tonight, were you attacked in the bathroom?”

Bruce opened his mouth and closed it again.  He could feel the energy in the air crackle and pop with the idea that an intruder may still be at large.  “No one was in there with me,” Bruce said firmly.

“I heard voices…Ow!” Tony’s voice floated down, but someone hit him to shut him up.

“Ok, good.  No need to send out a posse,” Steve said with a gentle smile as he turned back to Bruce.  “What made you go in there…well…if it was other than the obvious.”  The blush across Steve’s nose was enough to make Bruce muster a smile.  “Then what happened?”

“I washed my face, and when I looked up, it was the Other Guy.”  There were a few quickly switched glances over his head.  “No, that’s ok,” Bruce continued.  “But then it changed into, well…Betty.  I thought I was dreaming.  I knew it wasn’t really her,” but he caught Steve’s stony expression anyway.

“So I tried to say good-bye to her, but it wasn’t her, so…she changed into Ross.”  The last few words were surprisingly difficult to say aloud.  His voice dropped because he simply couldn’t keep it up much longer.  “And I thought I was dreaming, so I didn’t even think about it and punched him the mirror.”

“Shouldn’t you have at least wanted to Hulk out?” Clint ventured.

“I…yeah…um…I don’t know.  See, that’s the dangerous part.  That’s the thing I was trying to say.  I’ve been hallucinating because I’ve been working with that RG-27.”

Clint looked from Tony’s stricken face to Steve’s hard jawline back to Banner.  “Ok, so the Captain Obvious answer would be to stop working with acid.”

Bruce tried to chuckle, but it came out dry and harsh.  “Well, the very good news is that if it’s the RG-27 causing the hallucinations, then if I’m tripping, at least I won’t transform into the Hulk.  But, it’s not a good long-term solution.  Still, you won’t have Hulk chasing a giant imaginary bee down the freeway, so that’s a win.”

Breathing was starting to get difficult.  He was exhausted, and the blood loss didn’t help.  Clint saw it in his wan face first, and stood and stretched.

“Who wants to help me hang a hammock?” he asked with a wink.

That seemed to be some sort of strange battle direction because Natasha, Steve, and Clint all disappeared, leaving Tony and Bruce alone again.

Bruce’s arm hurt, but he didn’t want to complain.  So he lay as still as he could in his cotton cocoon.  Tony watched him warily for a moment, as if he were trying to decide whether or not to speak.

His voice, soft, low to the pointy of husky, Tony asked, “Do you want to kill yourself, Bruce?”

Bruce opened his mouth to say “No!” to scream it in Tony’s face.  But then the question itself hit him.  Not “did you try?” or “do you think it was an accident?” or “do you ever think of how everyone else would feel?”

And razor-sharp Tony saw the exact moment when Bruce realized this wasn’t really about the broken mirror at all.  It was a simple, purely existential question.  And he saw that it took Bruce so long to formulate an answer that he didn’t need one after all.

Tony sank to the floor in front of the couch, resting his head on the cushion next to Bruce’s.  “Ok.  It’s ok.  We can work with that.”

The two didn’t have time for a deeper heart-to-heart as the rest of the team arrived.  Steve carried two huge roll-out futon beds on each shoulder while Clint and Natasha threw armfuls of blankets and pillows out of the elevator. 

Tony stayed where he was, letting the others work around him.  Natasha came over and slowly unwound Bruce and the blanket so she could check on the bandages.  They had seeped through and showed spots of red, so she had him lie all the way back so she could redress them.  She was pleasantly impersonal in her manner, which was just perfect for the way he was feeling right now.  He knew it was a front, but he also knew that it took discipline and effort to keep it up, so in a way, it was very comforting.

She had an aerosol spray of green pasty liquid that smelled like RG-27 that she covered the soiled bandages with before wrapping new, clean ones over them all.  Moving too much made the scent rise and his stomach tighten, so he stayed as still as possible.

Bruce’s attention drifted back to Tony, who was bedding down right on the floor along the length of the couch.  He had a futon and a pillow and a blue fleece blanket.  The others were doing the same across the couches and floor. 

“No!” Bruce protested weakly, wriggling his way out of the blankets.  He didn’t get very far because Tony threw his arms across his chest.

“Don’t move too much, Big Guy.  You’re hurt worse than you think.  Be still.”

“You can’t sleep in here.  I have open wounds that emit gamma radiation!”

“Hate to break it to you, Doc,” Clint said,  “but not as much of your blood as you think is actually in your body right now.  It’s mostly in the bathroom, which has been sealed completely off until JARVIS can get decom procedures in place.”

Tony snorted.  “Yeah, I mean I did plan ahead, but for you to like, cut yourself shaving.  Not…well…anyway it’s taken care of, and the most logical solution would be to move you as little as possible to contain the contamination.  And so we patched you up here as best we could.”

“You should have everyone evacuated until hazmat can clean the whole place properly,” Bruce admitted. 

Until then, Steve had kept busy arranging the bedding arrangements, but he calmly came over and pulled a portable Geiger counter out of his sweatpants pocket.  He silently clipped it to Bruce’s blanket and flipped it up to show it that its readings were all normal.

“We’ve given you a pretty high dose of that RG-27 stuff,” Steve explained.  “You’re as radioactive as a cell phone.  Yeah, it’s gonna wear off, but we’ll see what to do from there.  But, even if you hallucinate something awful, you can’t turn into the Hulk right now, so I’ll take my chances.”

Steve and Clint took the floor with Tony, even though that left open couches.  Natasha wrapped her robe firmly around her waist, toed off her slippers, and sparked up the gas fireplace.  The gush of warmth and light made everyone relax, and JARVIS turned down the last of the lights.

Bruce guessed he was supposed to sleep now.  He doubted anyone was.  Natasha sat on the edge of the fireplace with her toes entangled in Steve’s blanket. She stared into the fire as though she were watching a movie.  Steve may have been asleep, but that almost impossible to tell, and he was pretty sure that he and Clint were just breathing deep with their eyes closed. 

Tony, on the other hand, was watching him.

“Let me take you somewhere, Bruce,” he said vehemently, voice pitched low though the genius knew damn well that everyone could hear him.  “Back to Malibu, with Rhodey.  Or let’s go somewhere all alone, where no one knows where we are.  Let me take you to Alaska or Canada or some temple in the Himalayas.  Anywhere you want.  Let’s get away from all this.”

Bruce couldn’t move much more than his head, so he let his gaze roll over to Tony.  “This isn’t about where I am.  It’s about _what_ I am, and I’m not even talking about the Other Guy anymore.  I’ll just pack up my problems and take them with me.”

“I read about a therapy llama online,” Tony tried to start but Bruce’s tired sigh cut him off.

“Let Bruce rest,” Natasha’s voice floated over from her silhouette by the fire.  “Just give him a break.”

And the drugs were kicking in harder now, because Bruce almost thanked Natasha for taking the watch and guarding him against that sniping snark next to him, but his lips were far too clumsy to get the words out.  He hoped he remembered it for next time, but he doubted he would.


	15. Waking Up Alive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team tries to figure out exactly what happened to Bruce in the bathroom, and Bruce learns a little bit more about what his team means to him.

They wouldn’t leave Bruce alone.  At first, it was nice to have Tony steady him a bit on the way down the elevator to his own the shower—until a casual glance around the bathroom noted that his simple razor had been replaced by some electronic contraption, the mirror was gone, and even the glass shower doors had been replaced with linen curtains that hung from hooks in the ceiling rather than a rod.  If they had been this thorough with the bathroom, he wondered what was even left in the kitchen.  Bruce shrugged it off.  It was a miracle the place was still standing at all, so if they wanted him to use an electric razor, Tony would just have to deal with the stubble.

With Natasha’s help, Steve had sealed over the deeper cuts with several layers of medical glue.  It would help, though he would have to be careful not to rip the wounds open for a few days yet. 

Tony stood awkwardly in the bathroom door.  “I suppose you want a shower?”

He could feel a second skin of dried blood and the sticky remnants of the RG-27 spray.  “Please.  The stiches will be fine.”

“Oh, ok…do you need any help?”

“No,” Bruce said firmly.  He didn’t want Tony in there, asking questions with his eyes even if he didn’t voice them aloud.  And he needed to see what he had done to himself.

“Oh,” a little fainter.  He disappeared around the door jamb, but Bruce could hear a slight thud as he leaned his weight on the wall and slid down to sit on the floor.  “Then, maybe, I can stay right here where I can’t see?  Just for right now?  In case you need something?”

Tony sounded so hopeful that it cut through Bruce’s resistance.  “Do what you want, Tony.”

There wasn’t another sound from the other side of the wall.

Bruce turned the water on hot, but he didn’t step in until steam billowed around the room.  Tony had given him clothes for the elevator ride down, and they became damp and heavy in the heat, so he shucked them off.

Without a mirror, it was difficult to get a full gauge of the damage, but he could see the deep lacerations along his right hand and forearm, along with a myriad of shallow cuts and scrapes.  There was one larger laceration along the outside edge of his right foot, too, which made walking painful.  But, it seemed he was mostly just sore and very, very tired.

So tired.

Even the glorious feeling of water on his skin did little to bring Bruce out of his lethargy.  The steam in his lungs felt good, though, filling them up like water.  It felt cleansing.  But more than once, Bruce found himself nodding off under the spray, so he dragged the nearest bottle of whatever off the shelf and rubbed it between his hands.

He blinked away beads of water as he watched the slightly translucent soap ooze between his fingers.  Gradually, and yet all at once, the sight of the soap, of his own hands, of the familiar shower walls, were completely unfamiliar.  It was a strange feeling, like entering a dream—or maybe waking up from one.  Or, he thought, like those few and far between moments when he was aware of changing consciousness with the Other Guy.  It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling—just totally unreal.

Bruce gave up on the soap and let his legs fold beneath him on the shower floor and the hot water cascade over him.

“Bruce?  You ok, buddy?” Tony’s voice called after long time. 

But Bruce was already levering himself up.  He shivered in the chill air, but the electric buzz and crackle of a heating lamp overhead preceded a flood of warmth into the room. 

“Thanks, JARVIS,” Bruce mumbled. 

A towel and a robe and a set of flannel pajamas were laid out on the shelf, and Bruce dried himself off, then rolled gauze over and over his wounds, tying the strip at his wrist off with his teeth.  Then he dressed, and without any other excuse since they took everything else, he went out into the bedroom.

Tony was lying on his bed, watching the entrance of the bathroom but trying very hard not to.  He must have tired of the floor at one point.  

“Everything ok?” Tony asked softly.

“Yeah, yeah.  None of the stitches split, and the hallucinations take a little while to kick in, so…”

Tony shook his head.  “Everything ok with _Bruce_?”

He didn’t know how to answer that.  He shook his head, then looked down when he couldn’t stand the sight of Tony’s gaze. 

“Come sit down for a second,” Tony said.  He pulled Bruce down on the edge of the bed, gently minding his sore spots.  “The guys…the team, they’re all in your living room right now, and they want to talk to you.  They want to know what they can do to help you.”

Bruce’s cheeks burned.  “Hey, I…what I was doing was…it wasn’t what it looked like, Tony,” Bruce stammered. 

Tony held his gaze.  “ _Whatever_ that was, it looks like you need help.  And I’m going to be right next to you whenever you want me to for as long as you want me to.”  He took a deep breath.

“I don’t know if you _can_ help me, Tony,” Bruce admitted softly.

“Do you trust us enough to try?”

****

Bruce’s small living room wasn’t exactly built for entertaining—the open floor plan left a lot of space for practicing yoga alongside the picture window and for spreading his research from one end to another (with JARVIS threatening to turn on the fan the entire time).  A blue corduroy couch bordered one wall, with a matching armchair across a brown cotton rug, but there wasn’t much other furniture. 

The couch was currently occupied by Steve, who frowned and stood as Bruce followed Tony into the room like a hesitant shadow.  “You should be in bed still.  Here, come at least lay down here.”

Bruce was ushered over to the couch where he was laid out flat, Steve propping his feet up with a stack of pillows.  Tony stole one from the stack and sat on the floor to Bruce’s right while Steve leaned against the far end of the couch.

Bruce must have lost more blood than he thought because his comprehension of events was still a little incomplete.  In one second, it was just the three of them, and then when Bruce blinked next, Natasha and Clint were sitting together on the armchair.  And someone had wrapped him up again, this time in a purple down throw.

“Hey Big Guy,” Tony’s voice woke him. “Do you think you’re awake enough to have a serious conversation?”

“It’s nothing bad, Bruce,” Steve was quick to reassure, even before Bruce could form an answer.  “We just care very much about you and we need to know how to show you.”

A strand of blond hair fell over Steve’s eyes, but it did nothing to change his stalwart gaze.  He was so serious. 

“Ok,” Bruce said hesitantly, mostly because he wasn’t sure how strong his voice was going to sound. “Am I on suicide watch?”

Clint stifled a laugh.  “Unofficially?  Yeah, ever since SHIELD tagged and released you in high school.” 

Steve shot Clint a very disapproving look.  Bruce knew that look.  Apparently, they had a Plan, and Clint had already deviated from The Plan.

“What matters here,” Steve said, softening his gaze and looking back at Bruce, “is that this is your home. And you need to feel safe here, so we’re going to come up with some strategies and protocols to make sure everyone feels safe.”

Bruce’s hands were starting to shake and he felt a little cold.  It could be blood loss, he thought, but as soon as that idea formed, Natasha was pressing a warm mug to his left hand before melting back onto the armchair with her own.  Bruce had to shift up a little to drink, and Steve let him brace against his shoulder a bit so he could.  The tea was rich and very sweet, and Bruce wondered if she had put anything else in it.

“Ok, Bruce,” Steve started softly when no one else could find a distraction.  “We’ve been talking and it seems like there have been a lot of little events that all add up to you wanting to hurt yourself in some major way.  And sometime it’s not that obvious, either, so I’m sure there are a lot more we haven’t noticed.  And tonight…well, there’s no denying that you were hurt pretty badly.  You say that it’s these hallucinations, and I believe you.”

 “We all do,” Clint was quick to add, though Steve shot him another look.

“Is there any way you can tell if a hallucination is about to start?” Tony asked.  “Warning signs of any sort?”

Bruce considered the question.  “Sometimes my whole field of vision distorts, like a wave of heat,” he said.  He hadn’t realized it before.

“Every time?” Steve asked.

“No, but frequently enough that it’s a pretty good indicator.” 

Steve nodded.  “That’s good,” he said, but in a leading way that meant for Bruce to continue.

“And I hear things before I start seeing things,” Bruce admitted. 

“Bad things?” Natasha’s voice was very soft.  “Do they tell you to do things?”

“No, no.  That doesn’t happen until the visuals kick in.”

Bruce felt Tony stiffen where he was leaning against his legs.  The engineer had been shockingly silent since they entered the room.  Bruce didn’t know if he should be worried or relieved.

“Can you come tell one of us when you notice your vision change?” Steve said.  He tried very hard to phrase it like a question instead of a command, but so his voice sounded a little strained.

Bruce hesitated.  His mouth was dry and he licked his lips, but that didn’t help much.  “I’m not too sure I know how.”

“It’s really easy,” Clint said.  “You just say ‘hey, I think I’m tripping out!’ or maybe ‘is that purple dragon in the corner real?’ Because in our line of work, you can’t really assume it’s not.”

That made Bruce chuckle, and Tony did, too, out of nervousness.   But Clint looked right into his eyes; he knew what it was like to not be able to trust himself.  That strange feeling of being an imposter, of being some unreal version of yourself and not being able to tell the difference.  For a second, Bruce wondered what kind of purple dragons he saw in the corners and never told anyone about.

He was suddenly very tired.  He sank further into the couch, but Bruce knew this conversation wasn’t over by a long shot.

“How about therapist or a counselor?” Steve suggested.  “At least to start.”

That one did make Bruce laugh.  “Find a qualified one.  I dare you.”

Silence lapsed for a few moments, and Bruce knew that on some level he had won, but it wasn’t a victory of any sort.

“Just don’t let me hurt anyone,” he said as firmly as he could.

Four pairs of eyes blinked at him in confusion. 

“We’re not,” Tony replied. “And ‘anyone’ includes a certain someone with a penchant for smashing or otherwise.”

“I’m serious, Tony,” Bruce said.  “Just, no matter what it takes, don’t let anyone else get hurt.”

Steve rose to his full height before kneeling down in front of the couch so he was eye-level with Bruce. “Not even ten minutes and here you are trying to get Tony to blow you up,” Steve said, though his voice was light and playful.   “I don’t doubt you’re seeing things, but there’s something else going on, too.”

Tony crossed his arms over his chest.  “How do you know I’m going to try to blow him up?”

Steve shrugged as he stood.  “That’s how you two like to do things.”  He turned his attention to the full room.  “So, the plan is pretty simple here.  If Bruce needs someone, we’ll be there.”

“Someone should be in the Tower at all times,” Natasha said.  “Not just general security, but one of us.”

“I have JARVIS,” Bruce argued.

“Yeah, you do, and do you know who JARVIS calls when he thinks you’re in trouble?  Nine one fucking one.”

“I’m sorry, Sir. I will set a reminder for you to counterweight Dum-E so he can pull you out of the hot tub when you are black-out drunk without tumbling in after you.  Sir.”

“Point still stands.  What if no one had been home and the paramedics had forced that bathroom door open?”

Bruce winced at the thought.   He had to agree.

“We’re not going to lock you up, Bruce,” Steve assured him.  Those words released a fear inside that Bruce hadn’t even realized he was holding.  He knew his lips trembled as he nodded in response.  “And this isn’t a prison, either.  You go ahead and walk out that door whenever you want.  Ok?”

Bruce nodded again, but Tony nudged his leg a little.  “Ok,” he choked out.

Steve smiled and it was like the sunshine refracted off the surface of the Chrystler Building.  “But while you’re here, we’re going to make sure you’re safe, even if that’s from yourself.”

Bruce expected to feel ashamed at those words, as if he were some uncontrollable monster.  For most of his life, he would have felt deeply ashamed, and knew yes, he was the beast that everyone else should be protected from because he was too weak to do the job himself.  He was the one who always destroyed everything beautiful in the end.

But, this time, in Steve’s voice, it sounded like a promise. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for everyone who has stuck with this story. Thanks to readers who have been with this for months waiting and waiting, and thanks to everyone who picked up an unfinished story with faith that it would come back.
> 
> Your comments and encouragement are a gift! Thanks.


	16. Nothing Left To Say

Bruce, he surmised, was most definitely on suicide watch.  They were true to their word that he could go anywhere he wanted, but just about every area in the Tower was on complete toddler-proof lockdown.  The communal kitchen had new touchpads on the knife drawers and automatic safety-shutoffs on the stoves.  Even the blender had been moved to the top shelf.

Bruce limped out of the dim kitchen, intent on returning to bed.  His appetite had made a surprise appearance, and he had slunk out of his bedroom and into his kitchen to discover nothing really left but tea and water.  But after a quick look around the bigger kitchen upstairs, he decided the energy it would take to bypass the systems wasn’t worth it.  He didn’t even want to use the knives, but the reminder was just too much.

But on the way out the door, his eye caught a bowl piled high with fruit.  Perfect.  He needed a quick burst of something refreshing and nutritious.  He grabbed a banana from the top of the pile and wondered from which strange South American country Tony had imported them from.  This one was huge, and slightly tart green, which was just the way Bruce loved them.  He stopped just inside the entrance to the kitchen to peel his prize.   The peel was thick and it wouldn’t break at the stem. Bruce didn’t have a knife to split it, so he flipped it around the other way to rip the whole end off like he’d seen monkeys do.

“Whoa, Bruce!  Drop it!”

“Hey, Buddy, take it easy.”

The lights went on all at once, leaving Bruce blinking through the light-blindness, and he froze at the sudden, loud voices.  When his vision cleared, Clint and Tony were there, hands held palms-out and coming towards him.

“What?   What’s wrong?”  He said, backing up and holding the banana in front of him to show them it was just a piece of fruit.

Quick as lightning, a hand flashed out from the side and took the banana right out of his hands.  Bruce turned to see Natasha, in yoga pants and a tank top, holding a sleek, heavy handgun.  She unloaded the chamber and released the clip into her other hand in one smooth movement.

Bruce didn’t have his StarkGlasses on, but he didn’t need them to tell him that he was about to freak the fuck out if he didn’t figure out what just happened.

Clint and Tony—still both in their pajamas—looked just as shocked as he was, though Clint’s expression soon turned to rage.

“That’s your P30,” Natasha said just as Clint said, “That’s my fucking sidearm!”

“What was it doing on the kitchen counter?”

“How the holy fuck should I know?   I cleaned them all and locked them up hours ago!  And you think I’d leave firearms among the produce?”

“Guys,” Tony broke in with enough force to silence the agents and shift the focus to Bruce.

He had found the closest dining room chair to huddle in, but he was still shaking.  “I’m sorry,” Bruce said when he noticed the attention.  “I was thought it was a banana.”

Natasha gave the two men a scathing look.  “What did I tell you?”  Then, to Bruce, “It’s ok, no one got hurt.  But where did the gun come from?”

Clint bristled visibly, and Bruce tried to shift away a bit from the archer.  Clint had every right to be furious if anyone went through his things, especially the weapons he trusted his life to on a regular basis.  It would be a violation of trust that Bruce hoped he didn’t have it in himself to commit.

He swallowed before answering.  “It was on top of the fruit bowl.”

Clint seemed to deflate visibly.  “Bruce, you might not have even known you did it, and we both know you’re more than smart enough to get past my gun safe. Do you think you might have come into my room at any point after we went to bed?”

He tried to retrace his steps, but he didn’t have far to go.  Bed, his own kitchen, elevator, kitchen.

“No,” he assured.  “Not unless I’m missing a huge block of time.  Oh shit.  What time is it?”

JARVIS’s voice cut in.  “It is 2:30 in the morning.  And Doctor Banner has not been anywhere but his own apartment and the common area. ”

To his relief, a quick glance at the clock on the stove said that barely a half an hour had passed since he woke.  It wasn’t likely he had blacked out for most of the night.

 “J, where’d the gun come from?” Tony asked, though his voice said that he knew it was useless.

“I cannot interface with the weapon; therefore, I cannot confirm its whereabouts.” 

Tony nodded.  “JARVIS doesn’t actually track anything that’s not connected to him.  He won’t be able to tell us how the gun got there.”

In the meantime, Clint opened a cupboard and took down a garishly colored cardboard box and two bowls.  He poured enough sugary cereal and milk for two and plopped one of the bowls in front of Bruce.  Gesturing to the frosted flakes with a spoon, he said, “Anyone else?”

Two more bowls came down from the cupboard and there was the calm clink of silverware and ceramic for a few moments as they settled around the table.  Then, nothing but blessedly quiet crunching.  Bruce felt much better now that everyone was quiet, despite the faintly visible outline of the gun under the pajamas at Clint’s back.  The cereal was too sweet and his stomach was in knots, but he forced a few bites down.

Bruce swallowed.  “Did you mean to bring the gun to bed? I mean…that would be ok with me.”

That was, apparently, not the correct thing to say if he were to judge by Clint’s downturned mouth and silence.

“No,” he said firmly.  “That’s what gets me.  I remember locking it up very clearly.”  He looked rakishly across the table at Bruce.  “And I have _much_ better guns.  One might actually be useful against you.”

“Does it fire live puppies,” Natasha asked with a raised eyebrow.

Tony laughed, and then opened his mouth like he was going to take it a step further—then abruptly closed it again.  But Bruce smiled because it was pretty hard not to smile while imagining Clint Barton armed with a live puppy gun.  He would have to tell that one to Steve later and maybe he’d draw it for him. 

He yawned and everyone looked at him again.  The cereal was soggy in the bottom of the bowl, and Clint took it away when he saw he’d stopped eating it. 

“I’m sorry,” Bruce said again, because it was quiet and he felt like it needed to be said.

The line of Clint’s jaw tightened.  Everyone saw it because Natasha slid off her chair and took Clint lightly by the bicep. 

“We’re going to go make sure things are in their proper place,” she said.  “We’ll check on you later.”  They left silently.

Tony sat in his chair still, arms across his chest and leaning back so he could stretch out his legs.  He was studying Bruce, looking both at and through him like he was a hologram.  The bare, industrial overhead lighting reflected dark arcs off the wooden tabletop, and the amber light was so different than the turquoise-blue of the arc reactor that he almost looked like a different person.

And he was so quiet.  It still took a few more breaths—maybe he was making sure the other two were far enough away—for him to turn to Bruce.

“What happened?” he asked.

Bruce felt his heartrate pick up.  It was such a simple, open-ended question.  But it was just him, and Tony at 2:30 in the morning.  In the kitchen, where Bruce had just unwittingly pointed a loaded gun at him. 

He didn’t know where to start.  Sometimes, at conferences, he used to just open his mouth and the right words would eventually tumble out.  That didn’t happen this time.  There were no right words.

“When Ross…had me,” he started slowly, “he didn’t hurt me the way I thought he was going to.”  Tony was staring, the light refracting over his too-long lashes, and Bruce’s gaze dropped to the swirls of the wood pattern.  But he continued, “He kept me in that little cage, with the lights on all the time, but I can get pretty used to that.  But that RG-27 made me see things and I couldn’t get away from them.”

He didn’t quite know how to continue, or exactly how it all fit together in a way that he could relate in a chronological narrative.  After a few moments, Tony licked his lips and hesitantly asked, “What did you see that you wanted to get away from?”

“My dad,” he said.  Another memory caught him then, “And that day, after that night when you came outside and got me, I heard him again then, too.”

“Heard, not saw, right?”

Bruce nodded.  “Yeah.”

“Ok,” Tony said.  He was back to being noncommittal again, letting Bruce take the conversation where he wanted it to go. 

The problem was that Bruce desperately wanted to tell Tony about his time in captivity and how Ross hurt him, but another part didn’t want to relive it, even in the retelling.

“Bruuuciee,” Tony pleaded softly.  “Tell me what you’re thinking.  Just think out loud.  I do it all the time.”

“I want to tell you, but I don’t think I can do it,” Bruce said.

Tony uncrossed his arms and leaned across the table closer to Bruce.  “About what?”

“Everything,” Bruce breathed softly.  “Ross,” he said, louder.  “What happened with Ross.”

He shouldn’t have been shocked to see Tony smirk, but he was.  “There’s a very obvious solution to that one, but it involves extreme invasion of privacy.”

“Read the files?” Bruce guessed.

“Seems like a way to tell-not-tell.  I know you’ve been through them.  You can give me an edited copy.  Just a suggestion.  Open to others.”

No, actually, that sounded pretty good.  And the only way Bruce was ever able to read his own files was because it translated the first-person horror into clean, precise language.  It was much easier to read a nameless lab report than to face the memories head-on.  And Tony could read between the lines.

“Ok,” Bruce said.  And Tony smiled a little forcefully.

The kitchen clock ticked by but neither man moved.  Bruce wondered if Tony was waiting for him, or if they were both waiting for Clint and Natasha to show up again. 

 “And Clint.  Tony, I really don’t think Clint would have left a gun out in the open like that.  Ever.”

“So it what?  Magically transported itself to the fruit bowl?”  Tony’s goatee twisted as he thought.  “Are the hallucinations you’re experiencing now _exactly like_ the ones from before?”

“No,” Bruce said, but he knew this was a fruitless avenue.  He had notebooks full of observations and comparisons.  “Now I see a weird shimmering effect sometimes.  I never saw that in the lab.  The hallucination would just hit me full on.”

“Yeah, that heat-wave thing you described earlier.  Did you see that tonight?”

“No, it was pretty dark,” Bruce admitted.

Tony grunted in disappointment.  “So, visual hallucinations brought on by overexcited particles in the air?”

Bruce shook his head.  “No, I don’t think so.  Because I hear them, too.”  Tired eyes floated over to meet his.  He suddenly didn’t want to be in the kitchen anymore.  It felt cold and empty, and he shivered.  “It’s still early.  Let’s go back to bed, Tony.”

They had to go back to Bruce’s room if they wanted a bed, so they did.  Tony slid between the sheets pulled the blankets over the both of them.  They lay still for a long time, listening to each other breathe in the near-darkness.  JARVIS had darkened the windows against the Manhattan night, and it made the room seem more close and intimate.  Safer. 

But Bruce knew he wasn’t going to sleep again that night.  He could still feel the weight of the gun in his hand in that flash of a second before Natasha had taken it away. 

“I pulled a gun on you,” Bruce said into the dark, his voice thick with guilt. 

“Bruce, you had the gun turned on _yourself_.”

“Oh,” Bruce replied softly.  “I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse.”  He thought about it for a second, sitting up and hugging a pillow to his chest to rest his chin on.  The movement woke Tony up all the way, and he turned over so he could face Bruce.

“But I know that wouldn’t have done anything,” he said.  “That would have been pointless….”

“Think the Big Guy made you do it?  Maybe he wants out?”

“No,” Bruce chuckled humorlessly.  “No.  That’s not how he works.”  But the empty feeling of dread spread from his stomach until he shivered again.  A dark, formless thought floated through his mind.  He didn’t want to think it and pushed it down before it could manifest itself.

But Tony spoke it for him.

“What if someone else is trying to make you let the Other Guy out?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	17. Ballet and a half-healed hawk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony gets a break, Bruce gets some advice, and Clint gets a mission.

Butterfly-light touches tickling the bottom of Bruce’s bare foot woke him.  He didn’t startle, but he still retracted his foot under the blanket and glanced around blearily for the source.

Natasha stood at the foot of the bed.  Her hair, bright in the dim light, was tied back in a tight bun and she wore leggings and an oversized cotton shirt.  She put her finger over her mouth to signal him to be quiet and pointed to Tony, still sleeping beside him.

He glanced at the clock.  Five in the morning.  He had looked at it last only fifteen minutes ago, after spending a few hours tossing and turning, trying to settle enough to at least pretend to sleep.  Tony must have fallen asleep as soon as he had. 

Natasha beckoned him and Bruce slipped out of bed as quietly as he could.  She silently took his hand.

“Let him sleep.  He’s going to need it,” Natasha said as she led him from the room.  She stopped to face him in the little living room, but she didn’t let go of his hand.  “When you see people who aren’t there, can you touch them too?”

“No,” Bruce answered.  He thought for a second.  “Not yet anyway.”

She squeezed his hand before letting it go.  “Good.  So you know I’m real.”

He remembered Betty, leading him into the street into the path of an oncoming bus.

Yeah.  That was pretty important.  He needed to start paying attention to things like that.  Then again, he also remembered the smooth feeling of the banana peel in his hand.  A rush of adrenaline made his hands shake and his stomach drop.

“Don’t do that,” she said softly and reached out to take both his hands in hers again and hold them still.  She held them until he looked up her, patiently waiting for him to meet her gaze.  “Have you seen the studio Tony built for me?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Bruce followed her to the elevator and she asked JARVIS to take them to her floor.  The elevator headed down for quite a while before opening up on a white marble foyer.  The anteroom was small, with a wall opposite and a door to the right and another to the left.  A small table held a vase of purple irises and a gold-framed mirror reflected his surprised expression.  The room looked pretty much like what Tony thought of Natasha—elegant, polished, but hiding a lot behind closed doors. 

She went to the left and opened the door into a hallway.  The last door at the end of the hallway concealed a wide dance studio.  Thin, grey pre-dawn light poured in through windows mounted high on the wall and reflected off the mirrors on the opposite side, but it was still dim enough to need a light.  Natasha held the door open and pushed him inside towards a very well-loved over-stuffed couch shoved into the corner.  The slouching grey corduroy was quite the contrast to the clean lines of the studio.

“This is Clint’s.  He’ll be back later,” she offered as explanation.  “Did you sleep?”

“A little.”

“He sleeps here, sometimes.”

So he sank slowly down onto the couch and she turned away to the freestanding barre in front of the mirrored wall.  She cued JARVIS to play music, a classical piece that Bruce didn’t recognize, and began a warm-up sequence, but it was soothing and soft enough that he could hear the scuffed sound of suede soles on the padded vinyl dance floor.  Sleep wouldn’t come easily but he was tired, so he laid his head down, pillowed on the arm rest.  And, wow, he could see why the frumpy out-of-place piece of furniture was in Natasha’s studio.  It was long enough that there was plenty of room to put his feet up and it was firm against his back.  On a whim, he reached underneath and, just as he suspected, there was a bow folded beneath it.  Clint did spend a lot of time there because there was an indent right where his shoulder went, and the cloth smelled richly of the archer, like leather and wax and sweat, and just Clint.

Lying there, with the rising sun streaming through the windows and the music playing, he felt peaceful.  The mirror bothered him, just because he and the last mirror didn’t get along so well, but if he closed his eyes he didn’t even know it was there.

“Want to hear something funny?”

Bruce opened his eyes to see the sun quite a bit stronger, and Natasha’s face very close to his.

“From you?  Definitely.”

She gave him a mockingly stern look then folded herself to sit on the floor.  She looked straight ahead, watching him in the mirror.  “I was never actually taught ballet.”

“How did you learn?”

“Someone tried very hard to convince me that I knew how.  And they succeeded.”  She turned to face him then, and her eyes lit up from within in a way that Bruce had never seen before.  “It was the strangest feeling because I could very clearly remember _years_ of instruction…but my body didn’t remember the moves.  They couldn’t implant muscle memory.  That has to be earned.”

“Why did they do it?” Bruce asked softly.

“To prove they could,” Natasha answered in an equally soft voice but she didn’t flinch from answering. 

She turned back around and was quiet for a really long time, which wasn’t unusual.  Her gaze met his through the mirror and she was watching him steadily with something very close to curiosity on her face.  She was waiting for more questions.

The problem was the only questions Bruce could think of were pretty rude.  Then he remembered who he was talking to.

“Have you ever hurt someone when you didn’t mean to?”

“More than once,” she said.

Bruce licked his lips.  “I’m afraid I’m going to hurt Tony.”

“You’ve been saying that since you met him.”

He chuckled.  “More afraid than baseline.”

She nodded.  “Any particular situation?”

“So far, the most dangerous incidents have happened at night.”

Another solemn nod.  “They used to handcuff me to the bed frame at night.”  Now it was Bruce’s turn to nod in commiseration.  She turned around to face him again.  “You could try that,” she said.

Bruce chewed the inside of his lip as he thought.  Tony could make him handcuffs strong enough to at least give him time to get away.  It wasn’t a bad idea.  He didn’t worry too much about what Natasha knew about their relationship beyond the idea that they were intimate.  At this point, it was just safest to assume she knew everything about everyone.

“Clint’s going to come in soon,” she said after a few moments of silence passed.

He wondered at the reminder for a second before a thought occurred to him.

“Has Clint ever told you what it was like when…?”  And he didn’t have to finish the thought, thank God, because he was talking to Natasha and she could figure out just fine what he was referring to.

“Not much,” she replied.

“Have you asked?”

“No.”

“Do you think I should?”

She smiled again.  “If you’re going to ask him, this would probably be the time to do it.”

“Why do you still dance?   I mean, you’re very good at it, so you must practice…”

Natasha smiled. “Because I remember enjoying it.”  The smile faded.  “I have to leave tonight.  Steve wants to come with me, but he doesn’t want to go.”

Bruce knew what she was saying.  Steve needed to know that he was more or less under supervision.  And if they left, that meant Tony was the only one left—well, he always had JARVIS.

“Tony’s exhausted,” Bruce said.  “Or he will be soon if he has to be on guard all the time.”

Natasha nodded slowly.  “There’s Clint,” she said. “He shouldn’t come with us.  It’s too soon after he was knocked out by that blast.” 

Bruce chuckled. “Doctor or not, he’s not going to listen to me if I tell him to stay home.”

Her gaze dropped, and an almost-sweet smile crossed her red lips.  Bruce wasn’t quite sure if he was intrigued or frightened.   “Exactly.  So, Steve gave him a mission.”

She didn’t say anything else, but she didn’t really need to.  The sun was now streaming brightly into the room, so she shut off the overhead lights and turned the music up.  And then she started practicing in earnest, different types of turns across the floor until Bruce was dizzy just from watching and he had no idea how she could tell which way was up.

It wasn’t long before the door opened and Clint stuck his head into the room.  His eyes swept across the room from Natasha to Bruce, stretched out on his couch.  They narrowed.

“That’s my couch.”

Bruce moved to sit up, but Clint pushed him back down and sank onto the cushions on the far end.  “Please,” he said.  “You’re not that tall.  Just move your feet up a bit.”

Natasha didn’t seem to care they were there, and Clint didn’t say anything as he let the couch cushions take his weight.  He watched.  The corners of his mouth were turned down, but his amused eyes were focused on Natasha.

He saw Bruce studying his face.  “I’m not mad at you,” he said. 

This wasn’t about the couch.  “That makes one of us,” Bruce said.  “I’m still sorry,”

Clint nodded.  “It’s ok,” he said.  The corner of his mouth closest to Bruce quirked up a bit.  “I love this room,” he said.  “It’s all windows and mirrors.  I feel like I can see everything.”

Bruce took another look around the room.  Sunlight and mirrors.  Nothing to hide behind…well, except the couch.  He looked again at Clint’s face.  The shadows under his eyes were usually there, and he was sure the concussion exacerbated his restlessness.  He could imagine sleepless nights bleeding into daylight, and he wondered how often Clint slept on the couch.

The archer hummed along with the music and watched Natasha spin around on her toes.  Bruce didn’t know anything about dancing, but the geometry of her lines was stunning.  After a few minutes, the tempo of the song changed to something more upbeat and Clint stood and stretched.

Back arched, arms held gracefully above her head, Natasha was posed with her left leg held out straight out behind her.  Clint came up from behind her and wrapped one hand under her waist and another under her left thigh and pressed straight up.  Her red lips split into a smile at the pinnacle of the lift, and she bent her free leg and stretched her arms up.

“Don’t look down Tasha!” he warned playfully before sweeping her all the way down into a dive, her face inches from the floor.  She laughed and slapped his shoulder when he put back on her feet.

But Clint ignored her.  “Help me make breakfast,” he said to Bruce.

They left Natasha dancing in the studio, and he followed Clint back upstairs to the big kitchen because he had invited Tony and Steve, too, and Natasha probably didn’t want them in her space.  And the huge range in the communal kitchen made it easier to cook in superhero quantities. 

First Clint turned on the coffee pot then he rooted around the fridge and piled groceries on the counter: sausage, a carton of eggs, milk, and butter.  Bruce reached for the eggs, but he brushed his hands away.  Bruce’s eyes flickered down to the white gauze that wrapped around his forearm, and he lowered his arms, away from the food.  Clint, of course, saw the way he chewed his lip before he noticed and made himself stop.

“Don’t think like that,” he said.  “You and Steve cook for us all the time.  I’ll do the work.  You can supervise and make sure I don’t burn the place down.  The other guys will make their way here eventually.”

Bruce sat in one of the bar stools at the counter so he could watch Clint.  “I can do the dishes.”

“Make Tony do them.  Wait, doesn’t he have a robot for that?”

“I think it’s called a dishwasher.”

The elevator opened to emit Steve, hair still damp from the shower, in worn jeans and a white shirt.  He must have come from the gym.  At the sight of Bruce, he grinned.  Steve looked relieved to see him there, and he clapped him on the back as he passed.

“Good morning,” Steve said. “Thanks for breakfast, Clint.”

While Clint crumbled sausage into a large skillet, Steve took a seat at the counter.  He turned to Bruce and said, “Tony knows where we are.  He’ll come up later.”

Clint was pressing his thumb against the seam of a roll of biscuits.  The tube burst open with a pop, which made Steve look over.

“What was that?”

“Biscuits.”  Clint plopped the discs of dough onto a cookie sheet and tossed the tube remnants to Steve. 

“In a tube?”

“Yup.  They’re good.”

Steve made a face as he looked at the ingredient list.  “Do we have buttermilk?”

No, they didn’t, but they had lemon and Bruce figured he could curdle milk without hurting anyone.  He was right.  That was a win.  He guessed.  But they didn’t let him do anything else but sit at the counter as Steve mixed and rolled out biscuits and Clint made sausage gravy. 

Natasha arrived just as Clint was taking his tube-biscuits out and Steve was putting his tray in.  A few stray hairs had escaped and stuck to the sweat on the back of her neck, but she looked more relaxed and peaceful, and she took Steve’s vacated seat next to Bruce.

The quick look she gave Clint wasn’t lost on Bruce, but Steve blithely ignored it.  So they hadn’t told Steve about the gun.  He was relieved.  Steve would never leave him alone again if he knew, and he and Natasha were playing their cards close enough to the chest that their connection to this mission was obvious.  Something about it was personal.

The heavy clink of ceramic on tile broke Bruce from his thoughts and he looked up to see a plate of fried eggs, grapes, cantaloupe chunks and two of Steve’s biscuits, hot and golden.  He opened his mouth to say something, but it snapped shut as the steam rising from the biscuit shimmered with a strange light.

“What is it, Bruce?”  Natasha asked.  Her voice sounded loud because the other conversations had stopped.

He looked up to see three pairs of concerned eyes watching him.  “Nothing,” he stammered.  He forced a smile on his face.  Most of his smiles were forced, so it wasn’t totally unnatural.  “Nothing to worry about.”

The other three looked at each other.

“Yeah,” Clint said.  “I call bullshit on that.”

“Bruce,” Natasha said in a low, deceptively soft voice. 

Damn it.  “Just some weird lights,” he said.  His eyes fell to his plate.  He didn’t really want to see the expression on his friends’ faces.  “Nothing bad.  Don’t worry.”

“Ok,” Clint said and he turned back to the stove to serve up the rest of the food.

There was a light squeeze on his shoulder and Bruce looked over at Natasha.  She looked more concerned, though not nearly as much as Steve, but at least the Captain relaxed after they ate a bit.

Tony didn’t show up for breakfast, though Natasha took a plate up to him.  Or for lunch.  But Bruce was a little bit glad for his absence.  As extroverted as Tony could be in public and attentive as he could be in private, sometimes the engineer really needed to be alone.      

And Hawkeye needed a mission to make him relax.  Bruce could see the crinkle at the corner of his eyes that showed he was straining his vision.  He could guess that he had a headache and the bowstring-tight muscles in his neck and back looked painful, too.  But Clint doggedly followed him around the common areas of the Tower until they both were bored enough to nap, tailed him to his room to shower, and stalked him back to the kitchen for lunch.  After a few minutes of staring at the TV with glazed eyes, they took the untouched Pillsbury biscuits from breakfast up to the balcony to feed the pigeons.

Clint had his sunglasses on to block out the afternoon sun.  The shades, the fresh air and the dizzy heights eased the little lines on his face.

“Don’t throw yourself off,” Clint warned.

“Same goes to you,” Bruce said. 

But Clint still closed the distance between them.

The sun was getting low in the sky when Tony came out looking for them.  A white, grease-stained takeout bag was in his hand and he was sucking down a soft drink in a paper cup, lips curled in a slight smile around the straw.  Maybe it was just Bruce’s hopeful thinking, but his steps looked lighter, too.

“Hawk,” Tony said.  “The _balcony_?  Really?”

Clint looked mildly offended.  “I have a very specific list of places we’re not allowed to go.  This isn’t on it.”

“What’s on the list?” Bruce asked.

Clint ticked off his fingers.  “The labs, the shooting range, the armory, IKEA, and Natasha’s bedroom.”  He looked sideways at Bruce.  “Those last two are because of me, not you.”

“Good to know,” Bruce said.

Tony huffed.  “Come inside if you want to eat.”

The bread and the birds were long gone, so they did. 

****

That night, after seeing Natasha and Steve off in the sleek black helicopter that Natasha had arranged, Bruce and Tony lay down together in Tony’s bed.  The bathroom door was open, not a trace of blood in the room beyond.

“Tony,” Bruce whispered in the shadowed dark.  “Will you do something for me?

“Anything, Sn--uh—Brucie. What is it?”

Bruce licked his lips.  He could hear the hesitation in his own voice when he said, “Tie me to the bed?”

Silence.  Confusion on Tony’s face.

Bruce tried again.  “Tie me up so that I can’t hurt anyone.”

“Oh, Bruce,” Tony said, just a breath in the dark.  “Ok.  Yes.  Of course.  With what?”

“Whatever you think will work.”

 

 

 

 


	18. Revelations

The sight of the familiar brown leather cuffs, looking black in the too-bright light of the arc reactor, made Bruce’s chest ache with an almost unfamiliar longing as Tony brought them out from the nightstand drawer and set them on the bed at Bruce’s side.  He sat up on the edge of the bed to face him.

“Nothing new, nothing scary,” Tony promised.  He looked away and back at Bruce before he said the next words.  “I’m not going to hurt you.  No matter what.”

Those words affected Bruce much more than he expected.  His throat and the back of his eyes burned so much that he couldn’t say the proper reply without his voice breaking, and he didn’t want Tony to hear that.  He averted his gaze and offered his wrists.

A breath of warm air gusted over his bare arms as Tony sighed hard in frustration.  “No, no, we have to do this right, Bruce.  If you can’t talk to me, then I don’t think this is the right time…”  He tugged a hand through his hair, then got up and paced across the room.  He paused.  “Where are your glasses?”

Bruce let his hands drop heavy in his lap.  “Downstairs.  In my room,” he said in a low, flat voice. 

“Do you want to go get them?  I mean, I know you haven’t been using them as much, but they helped you relax…before.  Or maybe it would help to use a different bedroom?”

Bruce smiled despite his uneasiness.  “No,” he said.  “The glasses…”  Now it was his turn to sigh.  “I don’t always want someone to know everything that I’m feeling.”

“JARVIS is not going to tell anyone—“

“JARVIS _is_ someone!” Bruce snapped.

Tony looked stricken for a second before he schooled his expression into something closer to neutral.  “I see your point.”

But the bright burst of anger faded quickly into shades of green behind his eyelids, and Bruce hoped he hadn’t turned green on the outside.  He probably had.  He didn’t want to look down at his hands and see.

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “I know you’re not going to hurt me.  I just wish I could promise the same thing.”

Tony’s shoulders slumped a fraction, which showed how rigidly he had been holding himself.  He approached the bed slowly, and when Bruce didn’t move, he reached down and picked up the cuffs.

“I’m not asking for promises,” Tony said.  “I don’t want anything from you.”  He took one of Bruce’s wrists and eased it into the leather.  “But I’ll tell you what I want _for_ you,” Tony continued as he drew the strap tight.  “I want you to feel safe.  I want you to sleep in, and eat your fill, and work as much as you want.” 

Tony fastened the other cuff around his opposite wrist and motioned for Bruce to lie back down on the bed.  Bruce obeyed.  Then Tony took the short safety straps from the drawer and attached the cuffs to the headboard.  To Bruce’s surprise, he took another set of cuffs—the same leather, but wider and stronger—and moved to Bruce’s feet.  And he kept talking as he worked.

“But, most importantly so listen up, I want you to know that you belong here.  More than that, I want it to be a core part of your spirit because you’re already part of ours.  Just know that if—or when—you decide to leave, I’m going to miss you every second you’re gone.  No one’s going to forget you.  The real you, not what it says in some newscast or personnel file.”

When Tony was done speaking, Bruce was bound hand and foot to the bedframe.  Tony climbed over Bruce’s body to get to his side of the bed, even though he could have walked around, and stretched out to face him.  Tony reached out and touched his face, and he was a little surprised that his fingers came back wet.  Bruce didn’t know when the burning behind his eyes had spilled over into tears, but the pillow was damp where he rubbed his cheek against it.

Tony wiped his face with a corner of the satiny sheet before he reached over to test the limits of the straps.  Bruce had enough slack to bring his wrists down to his shoulders, but no farther.  His feet had less give, but they weren’t tied apart, so he could turn onto his side just fine if he wanted to.

But then Tony began to very lightly run his fingertips across Bruce’s collarbones, and he didn’t want to move at all.

“Is this ok?” Tony asked.  He was leaning up on his elbow so that the light in his chest shone into Bruce’s face.

Bruce shivered a little at the attention and Tony drew back.  “No, don’t stop.” 

Tony gave him a puzzled look, eyebrow raised and mouth quirked to the side.  “Three negative words in row can’t be a good thing.”

“It is if the pauses are in the right place.”

But Tony didn’t start up again.  Of course, Bruce thought, he ruined the moment.

“Did it feel good?” Tony asked after a few seconds. 

“Yes,” Bruce replied.

“Do you want me to keep doing it?”

“…Yes.”

“Say it to me.  Tell me that you want me to touch you.”

Bruce swallowed.  “It feels good when you touch me.  Keep doing it…please.”

“Yes,” Tony said and he let his head fall to the pillow as his clever fingers ran across Bruce’s skin.  Tony kept his touch light and neutral, nothing more than the electric tingle of human skin against skin.  Callouses skimmed the bared skin of his chest and the indentations between his ribs, traced the bones around his sides, and blunt fingernails scratched the tender skin underneath his arms.  And Bruce hadn’t lied.  It did feel good.  He knew Tony wasn’t going to go any farther than he wanted; he could feel Tony’s intentions in the lightness of his touch, in the way that he drew back just a bit whenever his fingernails scraped a little roughly and it took a second for the hand to return again. 

Bruce was beginning to drowse on the hazy rush of sensation when Tony’s voice sounded low in his ear.

“What are your safe words?”  He kept his voice light, not like when he was warning Bruce of an intense scene.  The warm alcohol-and-cigar huskiness of his voice was replaced with a gentle reminder that Bruce associated more with JARVIS than with his creator.

But that didn’t stop Bruce from having to swallow hard again before trying to answer.  “Red.  Yellow.  Green.”

Tony hummed a little in approval but he didn’t say anything else.  He propped himself up on his elbow and looked down on Bruce as he continued to stroke his skin.  His eyes were black and deep, but his gaze was mellow, and Bruce knew that Tony was looking through him more than at him.

It was strangely comforting.

But after a long time of Tony staring into the distant darkness, Bruce realized he wasn’t planning on sleeping.

“You can sleep,” Bruce said.  “I can get these cuffs off myself if I really need to, or I’ll just wake you up.”

Tony’s eyes refocused, though they were still as jet black as before.  “Wake me up.  Always wake me up.  Even if you’re getting out of it yourself, ok?”

“Yes, Tony,” Bruce said.

“But I’m going to enjoy you right here for as long as you want to be here,” Tony said.  He leaned up a little more so he could look Bruce straight in the eyes.  “Because it might only be a few minutes, and who knows, maybe it will be the last time I’ll ever get to have you tied to my bed.”

Bruce’s heart sank.  He didn’t want to make promises he didn’t know if he could keep, but he felt like he should say something.

“Tony, I’ll always—“

“Don’t, Bruce.”  Tony’s voice was firm, but very kind.  “It doesn’t matter.  What I’m trying to say is that I want to enjoy it while it lasts.  Everything changes.  It has to.  We’re no different.”

Then Tony flopped down onto his mattress and curled a little around Bruce’s side.  Bruce turned over to accommodate him, and Tony reached up to straighten out the straps and ensure they hadn’t tangled.  “This ok?” he asked.  “Give me a color?”

“Green,” Bruce said into the pillow.  “Go to sleep.”

“In a while.  I slept a lot today.”

Tony’s hand crept between them and began scratching his back in long, lazy strokes.  Bruce groaned and allowed himself to press back a little into that touch.  Tony took it as the encouragement it was and pressed the pads of his fingers firmly up his spine. 

Bruce wanted to tell Tony how _good_ it felt,  He wanted to tell him to never stop because it had been so very long since anything felt that good.  He wanted to tell Tony exactly how much had changed for him since his most recent captivity, how it had affected him exponentially more than any of the previous times.  How food didn’t taste the same, and his clothes hung loosely from him now even though he used to stretch the seams on Tony’s dress shirts because his shoulders were just a bit broader.  How colors seemed washed out and the light was too bright and the day was too long.

But no words came, and the longer he was silent, the less important they seemed.  The universe narrowed to the ebb and flow of Tony’s fingers across his back in time to his breath.  He was floating in an ocean, anchored hand and foot to keep him from drifting too far ashore. 

****

Bruce expected the dreams when they came for him that night.  He expected to see the faces of the soldiers he killed, like he did on some nights, or gunfire, or maybe of Tony if the night was being kind.

He didn’t expect to open his eyes to see the blonde woman leaning over him, staring intently at his face.  He opened his mouth to shout, but she looked at him strangely before putting her finger over his lips and pointing to a sleeping Tony by his side.

For a few seconds, Bruce stared at the woman, not quite sure if it was Natasha.  Had she dyed her hair?  It wouldn’t be the first time.  But, no, this woman was taller, more ethereal with skin so pale it was luminescent in the darkness.

“Who are you?” Bruce asked. He tried to keep his voice pitched low, but demanding at the same time.  It came out rough and forced.  He wished he had his glasses after all so he could focus a little better.

She smiled.  “You know who I am,” she said gently, as if they had known each other for a very long time and Bruce had only recently forgotten.

The slight, sad smile remained on her face as she reached down to undo the straps on his ankles.

“What are you doing?” Bruce said.  She loosened the leather around his ankles and left the cuffs to dangle off the foot of the bed.  He tried to reach down and stop her, but his hands jerked at the end of the tethers. 

“Bruce?” Tony’s bleary voice cut through the fog in Bruce’s brain. 

He blinked, and the woman was gone.  Tony sat up in bed beside him.

“Did you see her?” Bruce asked, his voice rising in pitch with excitement.

Tony didn’t answer right away.  He blinked a few times, looked at the cuffs tight around Bruce’s wrists and then down to the ankle cuffs hanging loose off the bed.  His eyes narrowed.

“How the fuck did you do that?”  His eyes widened just a bit.  “See what?”

“There was a woman!  She undid the cuffs!”

Tony immediately unlatched Bruce’s wrists.  “Is she still here?  Can you see anything?  JARVIS!  Who’s been in here?”

“I have no record of any visitors,” JARVIS said.

“I thought I was dreaming,” Bruce said.  “But I saw a woman with blonde hair.  Tall, slender, really pale.”

“Pepper?”

“No, nothing like Pepper.  She was…wearing pink? Or something about her was pink?  And her hair was more white than blonde.  Actually, I thought it was Natasha at first by the way she was acting.”

“JARVIS?” Tony asked to the air.

“No person with that description has been in the vicinity of the penthouse this evening.  And Agent Romanoff has not yet returned.”

Tony was on his feet and pacing.  “Keep it quiet, but I want the Tower on high alert.  No one goes in or out without us knowing.  Scan all the labs and make sure nothing’s hiding in the corners.”

Bruce looked at the ankle cuffs.  They were new and polished leather, and he could see the greasy smudge of Tony’s fingers if he held it up to the light the right way.  The leather wasn’t damaged, but he couldn’t see how they were manipulated, either.

“Telekinesis?” Bruce murmured aloud.

“What?” Tony asked as he sat heavily on the mattress beside him.

Bruce took Tony’s fingers and fit them over the prints.  “Only yours.  How did these come off?”

“Gloves don’t leave fingerprints, Bruce.”

“But no one was here.  So what if no one was…here?”

Tony raised an eyebrow, but it looked like he was processing the idea.

“I’m waking Clint up,” he announced.

“No, Tony!  It can wait.”

“Until what, Bruce?  Look, I really want to believe you.  But that means that I _believe_ you and there’s some…thing in my house and it’s not leaving you alone.”

“Maybe I’m just crazier than I think,” Bruce admitted because that sure did sound crazy to him.

Tony sighed and rested his weight against his shoulder.  “I don’t believe that, either.  I think you’re pretty fucking nuts.  It’s hard to imagine much crazier.”

That made Bruce laugh, sudden and clear, and he guessed that was the point.  It was true, after all.

****

“Let me summarize this back to you and make sure I got it right.”  Clint, bleary-eyed, took a large swig of coffee before he continued.  “So these hallucinations might actually _not_ be hallucinations because it’s really hard for you to differentiate between reality and…not reality.  So you just assumed it was real, but then not real, but now it’s real again?”

“Umm…”  Tony tapped his fingers against the table.

“Yeah?  Sort of.” Bruce said.

Clint took a deeper drink from his mug.  “Ghost?  Poltergeist?  You don’t have that long a list of ex-girlfriends,” his face twisted, “or boyfriends or whatever.”

This was the part that still made Bruce’s cheeks burn a bit. “She said she was a guardian angel,” he said. 

Clint shared a long look with Tony. “Well, that’s fucked up.”

Tony shrugged.  “Atheist,” he announced.

“What about Thor?” Clint asked.

“Demi-gods don’t count.  He’s Asgardian.”

Clint rubbed his face.  “No, I mean Thor might know what it could be.  If we could get ahold of him.”

“He didn’t know about the Chitauri,” Bruce reminded them.

They were silent for a few moments, all lost in thought.  Bruce really didn’t know what to think any more.  He was tired of being the focus of attention, even if Tony and Clint were trying their best to treat him normally.  Mostly, he was tired of being tired. 

“Whatever’s going on,” Clint said slowly, “we’ve been doing a fine job of fending it off so far.”

Bruce was a bit shocked.  “I pointed a gun at you.”

“Yeah, you keep reminding me.  But no one got hurt.  That time.  But if this is a conscious entity after you, then it really wants you because it’s spending a lot of energy on haunting you to death.”

Tony made a pensive noise deep in his throat.  “If it has that much energy to spare, then it’s pretty powerful.  It’s not like some parasitic inter-dimensional animal that’s feeding off you because then it would want to keep you alive. Miserable, maybe, but alive.  It’s a higher-order being.”

“That’s a lot of speculation,” Bruce said.

Clint shrugged.  “Well, I’m not quite sure how a bow and arrow is going to help here.”

“You see a lot more than we do,” Bruce said.

Clint looked at him askance, waiting for the punchline but it didn’t come.  “You know I don’t have, like, infrared vision or anything.  Don’t JARVIS’s scanners cover the visible light spectrum?”

“Of course they do,” Tony said.

“So what don’t they cover?”

Tony’s eyes widened as he thought, and he got up from the table to walk a few feet away and pull up a holographic display.

Clint shook his head.  He looked tired, still rumpled from being roused from sleep, but he smiled as he got up to refill his coffee.  He took a long, thoughtful sip and turned back to Bruce.

“Just your luck, huh?  It’s not you, Bruce.  It doesn’t matter why it chose you.  This isn’t your fault.  That mind control business—it’s not _you._ ”

Clint swallowed and looked away and took another sip of coffee.  Bruce didn’t know what to say, so he stayed quiet, but Clint’s words had a more profound effect on him than he expected.  And he knew Clint didn’t say that lightly.  Still, it was a few minutes before Clint could sit back down at the table and smile again.

 

 

 


	19. Glass houses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint finally gets his new jet! And Tony realizes they need to get away from New York for a while.

Bruce didn’t think he was going to sleep again that night, but he was so tired that he dropped off lounging on Tony’s penthouse couch while the engineer was engrossed in designs and half-murmured conversations with JARVIS.  He woke once, briefly, when Tony slipped off the couch next to him, but he burrowed deeper into the blanket that someone had draped over him and fell back into dreamless sleep.

He awoke fully when the sun was already high in the sky and the penthouse was full of daylight.  The TV was tuned to the news, but it was muted.  The anchor was smiling, but he couldn’t quite make out the headlines, so he fumbled for his glasses on the coffee table and put them on.  It was something about a pet food recall and he snorted at her bright smile. 

“You’re awake,” Tony said as he entered the kitchen with two mugs in his hands.  He shoved one towards Bruce and cradled his own in his lap as he sat down.  The blue in his brocade housecoat brought out the shadows under his eyes.

“Can Clint fly a plane?” Tony asked.

“I’m kind of assuming that’s where the ‘hawk’ part comes in,” Bruce answered.  He sniffed at the steam rising from the mug.  It was tea, so he sat up to drink it.

Tony slurped from his own mug.  “Would you get in a plane that he flew today?  You were the one who saw how hard he hit his head.  JARVIS tells me my judgment on these matters is…poor.”

“Mr. Stark has lost consciousness in the armor—“

“Hey!” Tony cut JARVIS off before he could give a number.  “That’s confidential information, buddy!”

“Dr. Banner is your private physician—“

“Mute,” Tony snapped and JARVIS fell into smug silence.  “Back to Barton,” Tony redirected.

“Right…yeah…” Bruce sipped from his tea so he could think for a second.  “Is this an Avenger thing?”

“No.  We’re not going to fly through a war zone or go blow up any rouge Stark tech.”

Bruce leveled him with his best deadpan stare and took another deep sip from his tea.  Tony was evading, which meant he was plotting something. 

“Maybe.  Look, if we just _happen_ upon a crate of missiles, we’ll blow them up,” Tony continued.  “But nothing fancy.  So do you think Clint can test drive his new jet? Because I really don’t want to tell him it’s here if you’re not going to clear him to fly it yet.”

“Yeah, we can do that.”

*****

Bruce was serious when he said “we.”  He insisted that Tony go along to copilot, and he go along just in case Clint started feeling sick in the air.  He knew that they wouldn’t leave him behind on his own, especially after the past few days, but it felt better to be there for a purpose and have a job to do.

And he really wanted to see the look on Clint’s face when he saw the jet for the first time.

Tony flew in the armor to his upstate hanger to fetch the jet where it had recently undergone renovations, which left Bruce to wait with Clint.  He was under strict instructions to not tell Barton where Tony went.  Tony was going to land the jet right outside the penthouse windows, on the balcony’s helipad, and he wanted to see Clint’s reaction.

Clint was sprawled on the couch in purple pajama pants (“Like ‘em, Doc? I know your better half does.”) and a white t-shirt.  He was dozing, and the coffee cup balanced on his chest bobbled up and down with his breathing.

Bruce was a terrible liar, but it made it a lot easier that Clint didn’t particularly give a shit about anything that didn’t involve arrows or coffee, and he had both within easy reach.

With a few moments of silence to himself, Bruce had time to think about the last few hours.  Doubts about the safety of having him on a plane prodded at his conscience, but he pushed them aside by reminding himself that Clint and Tony would not leave him alone, and he really didn’t think Clint should be flying by himself.  He could do it for Clint, and trust that his teammates would keep him out of trouble.  Especially since they—apparently—trusted being crammed into a flying metal tube with him.

Clint was just waking up from his nap when Bruce could hear the distinctive whine of a repulsor engine.  Clint heard it not long after.  He looked concerned more than surprised.

“Are Steve and Nat back?” he asked.

“It’s Tony,” Bruce said, pointing out the window.

Rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hands, Clint got up and strolled to the window.  Bright morning light obscured his face, but Bruce could see the moment he saw the jet on the helipad because his hands dropped loose to his sides, and every fiber of him snapped to attention as he stared out the window.

A huge open-mouthed grin stretched across Clint’s face when he turned to look at Bruce.  Bruce must have been grinning, too, because Clint’s eyes narrowed a little.

“You knew!” he said.  But he was annoyed for only the time it took to look back out at his new quinjet and then he was jogging out onto the balcony in bare feet and purple pajama bottoms. 

Bruce followed more sedately.  The articulate tips of the sleek wings folded up along with the outboard flaps so the large ship could fit on the landing pad, and the purple stripes on the tips caught the sun rays and drank them into the matte paint.  Clint was already walking the wings, running his bare hands over every inch of paint and every rivet. 

The bay door opened and Tony strolled out.  The Iron Man armor followed him out the back, then walked it way over to the assembly strip so JARVIS could have it checked and cleaned and stored below.  Bruce shook his head.  It was no wonder that he was having such a difficult time distinguishing between fantasy and reality.  Living with Tony required too much suspension of disbelief for him to be able to tell the difference anymore. 

The thought occurred to Bruce that he hadn’t thought about his hallucinations for the entire morning, he’d been so focused on the thought of Clint’s quinjet.   He winced.  But then he guessed it didn’t count if he was thinking of it now…

“What do you think, Brucie?” Tony’s voice dragged him back to the present.

He hadn’t noticed Tony moving to stand beside him.   His legs were apart and his arms were crossed over his chest.

“I think he’s in love,” Bruce answered.

He was probably right.  Clint was engrossed in the post-flight engine check with JARVIS, and Bruce didn’t even see where he’d gotten the toolbox from.

Tony made a noncommittal noise and moved towards the bay door again.  He knocked on the open metal panel next to Clint’s head to get his attention.

“JARVIS will run diagnostics.  Come take a look inside.”

Clint finished with whatever adjustments he was making and they both followed Tony inside.  The interior upholstery was all black leather and chrome accents while purple LED’s and holographic displays lit up the walls.  It didn’t look anything at all like the quinjet that had they had taken to rescue Bruce.  The design didn’t even have much in common with the SHIELD jets.

“This isn’t the same one,” Bruce whispered to Tony.

Tony shook his head.  “Nope.  I took some liberties and had one of the newer ones customized.”

Clint really perked up at that.  “You mean beyond the paint job?”

“This is not the standard model,” Tony assured.  “Welcome to the Millennium Hawkeye.  I’ll give you a tour.”

The cargo area was small, but there were hatches in the floor for more space.  “It’s really more of a medbay because you can lock two stretchers in place parallel here and here,” Tony indicated.

Clint inspected the stretchers that were currently strapped to the bulkhead.  “Well at least I know I’m going to be a passenger in my own plane eventually,” he said. 

“There’s enough biomedical technology and room for supplies that you could be our air ambulance,” Bruce added from where he was looking at a bank of scanners and labeled drawers. 

Clint made a face.  “Then I have dibs on you for every mission, too.  Not much use to have a flying field hospital without a doctor on board.”

It was Bruce’s turn to make a face.  “I’m not—“

“That kind of doctor,” Tony finished.  “We know.  But you’re what we’ve got.”

Bruce ducked his head and didn’t answer, so Tony shrugged it off and continued the tour of the cabin.  The cargo area led to the passenger area, which was pretty impressive by itself.  Two pairs of chairs on either side of a narrow middle aisle could fold flat enough for even Steve to sleep comfortably while still being buckled into the shoulder restraints. 

“Oh, that’s not the best part.  Tactical mode,” Tony ordered.

The eight chairs moved into a circle that filled most of the cabin, and an octagonal table spun up from panels hidden in the floor.  After it locked into place, the table top lit up in a glow of purple holograms. 

“The table can display any of the jet’s sensor readings, but it’s also got usb inputs and data drives,” Tony explained.  “Passenger mode.”

Bruce and Clint stepped back as the table lowered back into the floor and the chairs swung back into position.

They let Clint into the cockpit first, without Tony’s running commentary.  The cockpit was roomy and open, without any kind of barrier between the pilot and passengers.  Bruce was decent with machines, and he could usually figure out what he was looking at, but plane consoles were far too complicated for him to understand at a glance.  It looked like a lot of buttons and levers every place he looked, so he didn’t try to puzzle it out.

But Clint slid right into the pilot’s seat and his hands reached out as if they intuitively knew where every button and dial was.  The cockpit was really bright compared to the windowless interior of the rest of the jet, and it took Bruce a moment to realize it was because the cockpit was almost completely glass.

“Oh, this can’t be safe,” Bruce mused.  He stuck his head in to the cockpit a little further to get a better look.  There were metal supports for the glass, but nope, mostly glass except for where the controls themselves were mounted.

“This is going to be amazing,” Clint breathed.   He fumbled overhead for a headset and slipped it on.  “Hey, JARVIS, you there buddy?  Run me through the pre-flight.  How much gas does this baby have?”

“I gotta tell you, Clint,” Tony interrupted.  “This isn’t a fighter jet.  No arms.  No ammunition.  I wasn’t kidding when I said Stark Industries was out of the weapons business, and well, giving someone a plane is one thing, but Big Brother really doesn’t like prototype fighter planes being handed around.  So don’t get into something that only a big gun can get you out of.  But she’s fast and agile, and she’ll get you where you want to go.”

Clint slipped the headset off and stood up.  He grabbed Tony’s hand and shook it solemnly.  “Thank you, Tony.”  He smiled.  “And if I have Bruce with me, I’ve already got the big guns aboard.”

******

Bruce left Tony and Clint to do the preflight check and stepped inside to make more tea—and coffee for the other two.  JARVIS warned him not to go far because Clint was going to explode if anyone made him wait a single second to take off.  But he was still in his pajamas, so Bruce figured he had time.

He should’ve known better.  He was talking about Clint.

“Everyone strapped in?” Clint turned to shout over his shoulder.

“Check the flux in the RT engines,” Tony barked.  “They should be between 4.2 and—fuck it, you don’t know what that means.  What color is the meter?”

Bruce looked dubiously at the paper lidded cup he had dumped his tea into as it rested in his chair’s cup holder.  Tony was half out of his seat and he growled a bit as he strained against the seatbelt and tried to see the control console better.  Bruce glanced sideways at the Iron Man armor strapped into a chair next to him.  It stared vacantly ahead at Tony.

“No backseat flying!” Clint said.  “I’m not going to do anything crazy in the middle of New York, and I have thousands and thousands of hours of flight time in so many vehicles I can’t tell you because it’s classified.”

“He can’t count,” Bruce mouthed and Tony smiled and sat back down to untwist the belts around his chest and waist.

“And JARVIS isn’t going to let me do anything stupid,” he continued, “like eject you on accident, right J?”

“You’re assuming J thinks that’s a dumb idea,” Tony pointed it.

“Indeed,” JARVIS said through the plane’s speakers.

“Well, if something terrible _does_ happen,” Tony said.  “I have Iron Man…”

Bruce didn’t really hear the rest of what Tony was saying.  What terrible thing could possibly happen? Aliens.  Yeah, did that.  Inter-galactic mythological beasts? He snorted aloud and surprised himself a little with the sound, so he was surprised the other two didn’t comment.  But then he remembered the events of the night before and an icy chill ran up his back.

What if she was there, watching them right now?  What if she decided flying in an unarmed plane was a _perfect_ opportunity to get him to try something stupid.  She could make him jump out of the plane, which wouldn’t even kill him, but boy would the Other Guy be pissed when he landed, and then…

“Bruce?  Bruce?”

He was shaking and sweating badly, but he hadn’t noticed.  Now he could feel the cold air of the plane’s ventilation system on his sweaty neck and back.  And someone was saying his name.

“Bruce, we’re still on the ground,” Tony said.  “Do you want to get out of here?”

He tried to answer, but his chest was too tight to get the air to make words, so he nodded.  Tony’s hands were on the buckles immediately, and then under his arms to get him to his feet and moving in the right direction, back towards the big bay door that opened up to reveal the balcony beyond.

The wind was strong up here, which helped a lot, but there were tears on his face that he had to scrub away with his hands.  He stumbled over to the balcony rail, and Tony let him though he wouldn’t let go of his arm, and he sank down to sit on the floor with the railing at his back.  Tony sighed in relief, but that was ok because the metal balcony felt secure underneath him, and the blue sky stretched out above him.

Tony, still holding Bruce’s hand, leaned against the balcony railing.  He stood patiently until he could feel Bruce’s shaking calm a little. 

“Ready to go back in?” Tony asked hopefully.  “I think you’ll feel better once we’re in the air and you feel how smooth it is.”

He didn’t doubt Tony, but he also couldn’t shake his fears.

“I think I should sit this one out due to…recent events.”

“Recent events?” Tony repeated with a raised eyebrow.  “That’s exactly why I think you should get back on the plane.”

“JARVIS can babysit me for a few hours,” Bruce conceded though he was sure he sounded miserable.

Tony sighed again.  Frustration.  “You sit out of the fun stuff all the time because you think you’re going to ruin it by being there.  Well, news flash.  You don’t.  You really don’t.”

“What if I freak out and tear the plane apart?” Bruce said.

“It’s replaceable.  You know Hawkeye is going to fuck it up eventually.  Just like I break my armor all the time.  And I have the armor and Clint has a parachute.  We’re good.”

Bruce buried his face into his arms to shield his eyes against the wind.  They were really tearing up now.

“Look, Bruce,” Tony said with his voice low and earnest.  “If you’re worried about hurting someone then you’re in the safest place you could possibly be.  Clint has those arrows that we know knock you right out…probably won’t work once you’re green, but we know the timing pretty well by now.  And I have the suit right there.”

Bruce was still too shaky to get up even if he wanted to.

“Ok, I’m pulling out the big guns.  Break in case of emergency time.  Do it for Clint.  He doesn’t know where Natasha and Steve are, and they left him behind because he’s hurt.  He’s feeling like shit, and this will definitely make him feel better for at least a little while.  If you don’t come, one of us is going to stay behind.  Doctor or not, you know it’s stupid to let Clint go up there by himself.  Hell, he probably won’t even want to if we’re not there for him to show off to.”

Though desperate, Tony’s plea was true.  Bruce couldn’t help smiling half way through, and he let Tony pull him to his feet and lead him back into the jet.

Clint had put the time alone to good use and changed into the tactical uniform Tony had hanging in the cargo area.  There was a bow stored there, too, and a small arsenal of arrows.  Tony hadn’t been telling the entire truth when he said the plane was unarmed.

Tony helped Bruce tighten the buckles on the restraint harness until he felt secure, and he managed not to comment on the sneaked glances he got of Hawkeye fiddling with toggles in the cockpit. 

Clint swiveled the pilot’s chair around so he could see them.  “Good to go?” he asked.  “You threw up already, right?”

“Yeah, we’re good now that you’re wearing shoes,” Bruce said, and he even managed a bit of a smile.  “I declare you medical unfit to fly this plane but fuck it we’re going to do it anyway.”

“Because we’re Avengers!” Clint said with glee.  He turned back to the console and flipped switches to make all four engines whine in sequence.

“Take it real easy until we get out of the city,” Tony said.

“Don’t worry.  I won’t even spill Bruce’s tea.”

True to his word, Clint looked at the flight plan, spoke a word to JARVIS in his ear piece, and then they were floating between the skyscrapers at a leisurely pace. They glided out over the ocean before he gradually engaged the forward thrust and they gained altitude until they cleared the cloud layer.

“Smooth,” Tony said.  “Real smooth.  How’s the tea, Brucie?”

“Not a drop spilt,” Bruce admitted.  He fumbled it out of the cup holder and took a long drink.  It was still warm.

“Keep the lid on it,” Clint warned before Bruce’s stomach bottomed out as the plane banked sharply. 

They were over ocean now, Bruce could see as the plane turned upside down. It kept turning, though, until it was upright again, and g-force of the move at least kept the tea out of his lap.

He barely had time to set the half-empty cup back in the holder before Clint banked hard and rolled to the other side.

The change in direction made Bruce dizzy, but the maneuver was natural enough that Bruce felt more like he was riding some giant flying creature than riding inside a stiff metal plane.  Clint was testing the responsiveness of the plane, feeling how it shifted around him when he asked it to go this way or that.  It was easy to ride through it, as long as he wasn’t trying to juggle a teacup at the same time.

It was killing him, but Tony managed to keep quiet until Clint leveled the plan out at cruising altitude, engaged autopilot, turned the pilot chair around, and look straight at Tony.  “So, what do you think?”

That was all Tony needed for him to launch into a running stream of everything he was thinking since he boarded the plane.  Luckily for everyone, he managed to keep it focused on jets, and Clint listened with rapt attention, adding in his own observations when they fit in.

Bruce let the conversation slip away for him until he heard nothing but the murmur of familiar voices.  He didn’t know anything about either flying or building planes, so he had the luxury of letting his head fall back against the purple suede headrest and his eyes slide shut as he let his stomach settle.

*********

“Bruce, wake up.”

He blinked hard and rubbed his eyes, but it was awkward to raise his hands to his face because of the straps across his shoulders and chest.  And he was reclining at an angle with his feet propped up.  Tony was already at work unlatching the harness and he was free by the time he remembered that he was in the quinjet with Clint at the controls, but he didn’t remember falling asleep.

“We’re here,” Tony said.

Bruce frowned.  “Where’s ‘here’?”

Tony smiled sheepishly and ran a hand through his hair.  “A surprise?  A good surprise!  Surprise vacation!”

The frown turned into a cautious smile.  “Where are we?”

“Montana.”

“I slept all the way to _Montana?”_

“Yeah, you did.  Come outside.”

The air was much colder after Bruce shifted off the cozy leather of the plane’s seat.  A glance at the cockpit showed it empty, but beyond the front glass, he could see a wide field surrounded by tall evergreens.

Tony paused in the cargo hold to open a side compartment and take out a pair of down coats.  He

handed one to Bruce and shrugged the other on.  Bruce was grateful for the jacket when Tony opened the bay door and an icy wind immediately cut through the plane.  He zipped it all the way up to the neck and shoved his hands into the flannel-lined pockets.

“Oh, that’s colder than I expected!” Tony gasped, but he was smiling.

Bruce followed him down into the meadow.  The grasses were thinning, but he was sure that in spring it must be quite a sight.  The open field was on the side of a mountain, and Bruce could see over the tops of the pines to the next tree-covered peak beyond.  The meadow was large—big enough to land four or five quinjets—and there was no sign of Clint.  Tony didn’t seem concerned, though, as he trudged across the grass towards a break in the trees.

A badly overgrown path led through the trees, down a short slope, and up around a bend.  The clear ground made it seem as though the path was planned, but misuse let the local vegetation get a hold of it again.  The dirt on the path didn’t show prints, but some of the drier branches towards the ground were snapped and hanging in odd angles.  Someone had come through here recently and not bothered to cover their tracks.

The hike was short, which was good because the piercing wind cut right through the down jacket, and the cotton clothes Bruce had on underneath sucked the body heat away from his skin.  He was shivering, and he kept an eye on Tony because temperature variations affected the arc reactor as it constantly tried to shore up Tony’s body heat while maintaining peak performance levels.  But he was acting just fine, not clutching at his chest or folding his arms protectively across the blue light like he did when he was trying to make himself hide the pain.

The path led them through the trees, then up a slope until the ground evened out and the trees opened up onto flat grass again.  This time, they were on a ridge overlooking a small wooded valley below them.  The ground sloped behind them up to a short sheer cliff, and built right into the sheltered side of the cliff was a house made of glass.

The house was no doubt a Stark creation on first sight.  It was all silvery metal and glass, three stories tall, cubic and built right into the cliff face.  There wouldn’t really be a way to see it unless they came around the mountain on the path they were currently on.  Even standing on the ridge above, the house was hidden from view, the roof blending in perfectly with the rock above.

Bruce didn’t know what to call it.  It was far from the cabins he’d managed to stay in over the years, but it wasn’t a ranch house or something like that either, which he would have expected on a mountain in Montana.

“What is this place?” Bruce asked as they neared the door.

Tony turned around to flash him a smile.  “It was kind of a science experiment that got out of hand, and then I got bored with it for a while.”  He stopped to kick some dirt off the concrete paving stones leading up to the front door of the glass cabin.

Tony turned to face the vast vista of mountain peaks beyond.  He pointed to the horizon.

“That’s the way to Canada,” he said.  “If it strikes your fancy.”

“I think I’m happy where I’m at for now,” Bruce replied.

Tony’s grin brightened as if Bruce had said the perfect thing.  But he turned back to the valley below.

“Most of the forest down there is private land, owned by Stark Industries.  It was kind of a thing a while to buy up forests and plant trees to offset carbon emissions, and well, jet planes burn a lot of oil.  So Pep had this bright idea to plant a bunch of trees and get these certificates, but it was easier to just buy the land outright and plant the trees ourselves.”

Bruce eyed him dubiously.  Most of the pines he could see were tall, much bigger than even a decade of steady growth could do.  “You didn’t plant all these trees?”

“No!  But I’ll take you to see the nursery tomorrow,” Tony said. “But I’m freezing my goatee off.  Let’s go inside.”

The sun was getting low, lighting up the path they had walked down to find the house.  Amber colored lights—not LED’s, but older incandescent lights—made the entire house glow from within in the darkness.  Bruce still marveled at the construction.  There was a living room and kitchen in clear view on the outside with a sleeping area lofted over it, but it seemed as though a bathroom and a stairwell, and perhaps a bedroom, were out of view towards the back of the house.

“Tony, this is beautiful, but I can’t help but think that it’s going to be pretty easy to pick us off one by one if someone wants to out here,” Bruce said at last.

Tony’s head cocked to one side.  “The whole point is that you don’t have to worry about any of that out here.  This is all private land, and no one even knows this house exists…maybe Pepper.  Probably Pepper.  But she hates nature.  She won’t bother us out here.”  He fumbled in his jacket for his phone.  “Ok, I was trying to save something for a grand finale, but if it’ll make you feel better—JARVIS engage camouflage.”

Bruce stepped back in surprise as the glass surfaces of the house shimmered and then the house disappeared into the darkening mountainside. 

“Retroreflective panels on the windows?” Bruce asked in disbelief.

“This is one of the places I tested a prototype, a while ago.  It’s easier here because there’s no need for a camera to refresh an image constantly because it’s just the same image of the rock face every time.”

Bruce reached out, and sure enough, he could feel the smooth wall of the house where there shouldn’t be anything but rock and empty air.  The shock of it made him laugh.  “You have an invisible house out on a mountainside?  How is this even possible?”

Tony disengaged the camouflage mode and the rocks turned back into a glass house.  “This house is where a lot of my designs became possible.  Long before the arc reactor, I knew Stark Industries had to get out of fossil fuels.  I looked into all of the sustainable energies: solar, hydroelectric, wind farms.  This entire house runs on solar cells, which are connected to panels further up the ridge.  There are windmills on that ridge over there,” he pointed off to another hill, “but I haven’t checked to see if they’re still running.  Anyway, it’s off the grid and it’s only accessible by something that can land vertically.”

“And it’s really cold,” Bruce admitted as the sun ducked behind the horizon.  “Please tell me you have heating.”

******

 The inside of the house was a lot warmer than outside.  The crisp air threatened to snow, and Bruce wondered if anyone had checked the forecast.  He knew a quinjet could easily fly out of an approaching blizzard’s reach, but the thought of being snowed in up here was almost luxurious. 

Though the frame of the house was metal and high-tech glass polymer, the interior was constructed with all sustainable materials.  Most of the furnishings were light pine, with cotton and wool upholstery in shades of earthy green and grey and blue.  Bruce smiled at the sight of another side of Tony he hadn’t seen before.  This wasn’t laid-back muscle-car Malibu Tony, or sophisticated private-jet New York Tony.  No, this was the part of Tony that wanted to save something, the part of himself that he kept hidden away because he was a little embarrassed.

The small living room was full of overstuffed furniture, though no television or electronics that Bruce could see.  The kitchen was open, too, and a short staircase led off to the side and up to a loft over the living area.

“Hey Clint,” Tony called out, and a tousled head peeked down.  “Hungry?”

“Yes!” he said, and he grasped the edge and let his legs flip over and down to the floor.

“Good, heat something up for us, would you?  There’s supposed to be something in the fridge.”

Clint made a face but passed them to go into the kitchen and poke around.

“Let me show you the bedroom upstairs,” Tony said. “That’s where we’re staying.  But it’s a little weird…”

“Weird how?”

“It’s outside access only,” Tony said as he led him back outside.  They went further around the building, back to where it joined with the wall of the overhanging cliff.  Steps were cut into the stone, rough, but smooth enough under Bruce’s shoes.  Tony led him up them, then to a side door that opened up into the bedroom.

Like the other rooms, the walls were glass, but the bedroom was private enough because the outside wall faced a sheer drop.  Bruce could see now where the steps were cut back into the side of the cliff so the door frame could be anchored to the rock face.  Some of the room had even been cut into the cliff, so it was much bigger than it looked like it should be from the outside.  But the ceiling was low, almost so much that Bruce felt the need to duck.  Thor would never fit comfortably in here.

Bruce looked around the room and noted the bed and furnishings were low to the ground, to make it seem bigger.  The wooden plank floor was covered in wool carpets, so Bruce toed off his shoes.

“The bathroom is there,” Tony said as he indicated a door to another hidden room on the far wall.  “And there aren’t any closets really, so your clothes are in the cedar chest by the bed.  I hope I got everything you’d want.”

Bruce sank down onto the king-sized bed and ran his hands over the flannel sheets.  “I bet you did,” he answered eventually.  He had been banned from the labs and the workshops, so there were no projects that needed his attention, or any deadline that needed to be met.  “How long are we going to stay here?” Bruce asked.  The thought had barely occurred to him that he didn’t know Tony or Clint’s plans for the impromptu vacation.

“Until we’re sick of it and want to go home.  Hopefully,” Tony said as he sat down heavily next to Bruce, “until we get some kind of sign from Steve or Nat that they’re ok or need help or whatever in between.”  He scrubbed his face with his hands before continuing.  “Haunted or not, we needed to get out of that Tower.”

Bruce nodded.  He did agree, but now the inclusion of the armor and Clint’s small armory made a little more sense, in case they were needed quickly for backup. 

When Tony looked up, his eyes were red and his face was creased with worry.  “Is this ok?  I wanted to be a surprise, but it’s not like we’ve kidnapped you, have we?  Clint can take you back any time you want, you don’t even have to talk to me about it…I mean, I don’t want to be left alone out here, so I’d go back with you, but…”

Bruce leaned in and pressed a dry kiss to Tony’s mouth to get his lips to still.  Tony inhaled sharply at the shock, but softened and smiled beneath Bruce’s lips.  When Bruce pulled back, he was quiet.

“This is a great surprise,” Bruce said, and Tony could breathe again.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
